


The Hope Only Of Empty Men

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Community: norsekink, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Mpreg, The Author Regrets Everything, because i got nothing, cracked drama, dubious moral choices, dubious narrative choices, i hope nobody was expecting a happy ending, triggering content, you must always blow on the pie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-18
Packaged: 2017-11-04 23:48:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 60,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In order to do the right thing, sometimes you must take the wrong and twist it around to make it seem like it never was anything of the sort.</p>
<p>But in the end, the road to Hell always has been paved with the best of intentions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Between The Idea And The Reality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taleya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taleya/gifts).



> Written for the Norsekink prompt:
> 
> _There's been a few prompts of a crack kind about the Avengers observing that Loki stops being such a huge pain in the ass when pregnant, and instead focuses on his child / is depowered._
> 
> _I'd like to see a darker version...after capturing him, althoguh they won't go as far as impregnating him, there are plenty of hormonal medications that can mimic the same thing. (In fact, that's how the pill works). And Loki is a big enough threat to warrant going into some very morally grey areas._
> 
> _So after a battle when captured, Loki wakes up in the medical wing of shield, disoreinted and informed he is pregnant. The details are vague, and he's not sure what's going on, (they're keeping him lightly drugged in addition to the hormones so he won't discover the truth) and he's been told it's a high risk pregnancy and of course his brother and his human pets are stupid enough to extend care and compassion to him rather than doing the logical thing and putting him down._
> 
> _Up to author whether or not he continues in a state of confusion (while shield also use it as an opportunity to mine him for information) or finds out the truth and goes thermonuclear. But go dark. Go as dark as you like._
> 
> I took the darkness and ran with it. And now I hate myself. That's all the warning I'm going to give you on this one.
> 
> Also, while there are no glaring spoilers for the movie in this, as I only saw _The Avengers_ halfway through the writing of it, there are odd allusions and whatnot that you're only likely to catch if you have seen it. But I thought I'd go with the Fair Warning thing, again.
> 
> Incidentally, the entirely inappropriate original title "Safer Communities Together" comes from the fact I read one word in the latter part of the prompt and thought of [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7UX8KASASU). If that doesn't give you fair warning as to the state of my brain as I wrote this, then I don't know what will.
> 
> The second title is from T.S. Eliot. Because his poem _The Hollow Men_ sums all this up...rather too well, frankly.

Loki is the younger brother, but in the months that have become Midgardian years since his fall from the Bifröst, to Thor’s eye Loki has both looked and felt older than he himself. Bitterness and hatred have etched deep lines upon his face, have hardened the fragile emerald of his eyes to something closer to the adamant fallacy of green-stained diamond. And even though Loki continues to deny their blood relation, in Thor’s mind he will always be his elder – he will always remain the one who was supposed to protect Loki throughout their entire long and lively existence.

Yet he always feels the younger, the confused, the _naïve_ one when he faces Loki across a battlefield. As a warrior born and raised Thor hides it behind a façade of righteous anger and justice-driven reason – but every time Loki has pushed him back with seiðr, every time Thor has raised Mjölnir to him his heart has beat a little slower, as if willing the world to end before they both destroy that which makes it worth living in.  

“Do you really think this is going to work?”

Of course it is the archer who speaks. The man always goes for the heart of any matter, and rarely does his aim not hold true. The Lady Natasha raises her eyebrows, flicking her gaze to him, but says nothing. She has always been much more reticent with her thoughts, but then that is why Thor is often unable to think of one without the other. In such a complementary fashion these two mortals are ever a pair to his mind.

_As we were. Thor and Loki. Loki and Thor. Princes of Asgard, brothers of blood and bond and heart and soul. How often did they ever see one without the other, in the golden vaulted halls of our ancestors?_

The doctor breaks into his troubled musings, each word low and sure. “It seems to be, so far.”

With some reluctance, born of guilt and uncertain morals, Thor turns to look again through the glass that separates their small chamber from the larger beyond. The doctor stays as an almost constant presence here while the others come and go. Strangely it is Barton and the Lady Natasha who have stayed the longest. Thor is not sure what that says about either of them, or their experiences with Loki in the past.

But he doesn’t want to think of the past. Or at least, not _that_ past. The distant past is more comforting, and he can see that in the youthful lines of Loki’s pale face; a kind of childish peace has returned to him even in this unnatural sleep. There is a future in this, Thor thinks. In this wrong they can indeed make something very right.

Or so he must tell himself.

The glass cracks beneath his fingers.

“Uh, big guy.” The archer steps closer to where Thor now leans too heavily upon the panel, though he is sensible enough not to put a hand on him. “We’ve kind of already blown the budget for internal property damage around the place this month, yeah?”

Lady Natasha sips her coffee, mostly to suppress a snort. Thor thinks bleakly he recognises that only because Loki had had much the same mannerism, years ago. “Maybe you shouldn’t have attempted to mate that flamethrower with your bow, then.”

“A man’s gotta have a hobby, Tash.”

“I thought that was what the X-Box was for.”

“There was an accident with the X-Box.”

One well-shaped eyebrow curves in high scepticism. “Involving a makeshift self-detonating arrow cum flamethrower, yes.”

Thor tunes them out. Often their arguments go over his head – although not half as often as anything and everything that comes out of the ironic curve of Tony Stark’s mouth – but that’s not why he doesn’t listen. He’s never quite worked out what they are to each other, but it doesn’t matter. They just _are_. The Lady and her Archer. The Archer and his Lady.

That alone seems to explain why he takes comfort in their presence even as he wishes to shout at them to go away and leave him to his peace and his pain.

“Will he wake soon?” he asks, tiredly; Dr. Banner looks up from his constant vigil over the bank of electrified Midgardian enchantments that tell him the secrets of his brother’s body, if never his mind.

“I think so.” Removing his glasses, he runs a hand back through his hair. The motion leaves much of it sticking up in crazy peaks that ought to be amusing. At that moment, Thor wonders instead if he’ll ever smile again even as the doctor squints at another display. “You have to understand, it’s hard to be sure of anything. His…physiology is odd, even for what little we know of his own race.”

The words unspoken are clear enough even to a mind that’s not inherently disposed to subtlety – _and even you cannot help us, because for all you call him brother we know that you are nothing of the sort, at least not in blood and biology_.

“Do you really think this is going to chill him out?” The archer is doubtful, and Thor is too weary to resent him for it as he takes his seat once more. “I mean, I know some guys go all ga-ga over their kids and I freely admit if I had rugrats and some crazy-ass motherfucker tried to touch them they’d have more arrows than fingers in less time than it takes to blink, but…going all Papa Bear on someone’s ass isn’t exactly helping, is it?”

Lacing his fingers together, Thor lets his head sink forward. He’d prefer the weight and constant low hum of Mjölnir between his palms, but this is no place for a weapon. He tries to ignore the light scent of healing and sterility around him that suggests otherwise, that gleefully whispers in his ear that the weapon has already been wielded beyond his ability to stay his hand.

“Being with child changes him,” he says finally, still unable to look up. His nails dig fine crescents to bisect the lines of his empty palms. “I know it might seem that Loki cares not for the sanctity of life, but…it is more to do with the lives he chooses to sanctify.”

“If you say so,” the archer replies, and Thor looks up with such weary conviction he almost takes a step backward.

“I say so.”

This hadn’t even been his idea. In the end, perhaps it had been no-one’s idea. Instead it had been borne of a drunken conversation – well, drunken _argument_ – in which Tony had insisted on dredging up every crazy mortal-wrought story of Norse gods he could find on the web of information the mortals had wrapped around their world like a mockery of Jörmungandr. They’d been gathered in a common room of the sprawling mansion, one of Stark’s mechanical devices spewing out light and information like a cursed well; it had been inevitable, perhaps, that such a conversation would turn to the subject of Loki’s alleged children.

_“Do not mock my brother’s offspring.” The tankard had turned to so much ceramic dust in his fingers, but he felt it no more than he noticed the blood dripping to the carpet below. “Not only would he take great personal offense at it, so will I.”_

_And Tony had frowned, bleary and baffled. “But he’s like…the mother of monsters.”_

_“He is their mother, yes.” When he’d turned away, that was when he’d noticed the stain of blood and memory upon his hands. “But in all hearts, there lurks a monster each of our own.”_

Yet for all he hadn’t wanted to discuss it, neither had he been able to walk away. In the end it had been the Captain who had brought it out of him, the stilted stories and recollections of the truth of Loki’s children – the truth of Loki himself, as it were.

Only later, after the cold stark reality of uncounted days and battles, did the idea seem to emerge fully-formed in the minds of more than one of his Midgardian comrades.

It shames Thor to realise that he himself is still its ultimate source, intentional or not.

_But can I deny that I wanted this, brother? Can I?_

He stares at Loki now, sedated by sorcery and by science. It reminds him of the way mortals regard his battles upon their planet; so often they do not run screaming from the danger that threatens to crush their delicate little lives and send them to whatever passes for Valhalla or Hel in this realm. Instead their eyes widen and their bodies still and they stare at death even as it swallows others whole, even as it turns to them. Though he’d never understood before, he thinks he understands it now as his eyes are drawn towards the flat abdomen beneath the stark hospital gown. Then his stomach clenches to see one hand has moved. At the level of Loki’s belly it lies still, cradling and unconscious – and yet, it is as unmistakable as the wretched gasp that escapes Thor’s own throat.

The archer’s look is sharp but Banner is putting his glasses on, engrossed in the sudden song of beeps and boops coming from his mechanical thralls.

“He is waking.”

“How’s he going to take it, do you think?” Barton asks over Lady Natasha’s continued silence. “Because if I got knocked out in a battle and then someone told me I was knocked up when I came to, I’d be writing a pretty strongly worded letter to the War Crimes Tribunal.”

Thor takes a deep breath. One proves not to be insufficient. Not even two quite gives him the strength. Only on three does he speak. “I can give him reason enough.”

“What, so he’s really got a boyfriend you never told us about?” Rubbing at one temple, Barton seems to be on the verge of misappropriating Lady Natasha’s coffee. From the look on her face, it would be worth his life to try. “Hey, no offense, big guy, but that could have been useful information. Who is it?”

And Loki’s head rolls upon his pillow, like iron to lodestone. It is as if he has been called and Thor’s fingers clench again, though Mjölnir is far. He still feels the tracery of electricity moving through his veins, the uneasy broken current of the soul-deep power it is ever his responsibility not to abuse.

Then Loki’s eyes open. Thor cannot hear him through the glass. But the shape of the word is as familiar upon his lips as his own name.

_Brother_.

“I will never leave him,” Thor says, heavy and helpless, “no matter the cost of his salvation.”

But when he stands, when he walks towards the white-painted chamber that has become Loki’s prison, each step costs him more energy than he even thought existed upon this realm so far from home.


	2. Between The Motion And The Act

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Loki wakes up, and the good times begin to roll.

His mind is filled with noise like the fall. The greatest peculiarity is that such a thing is truly almost no noise at all – instead the worlds are muted and distant while he slips down the cracks between them. Without the usual points of existence and individual to orient himself by he is left formless and peculiar, worn-out potential with nothing to call him into being.

It does not have to be that way. He _can_ reach out. There are anchor points, always there are anchor points – time, space, the creatures that move between and betwixt both. And this is not like the fall. There is relief in that realisation as his mind scrabbles harder for the surface of consciousness. Naturally he pretends the distinction does not matter. What does he have to fear, after all that he has seen?

 _This is not the fall_. _I am not falling. I will never fall like that again_.

There are people here. He can latch onto them, and it is easy enough given they are in possession of familiar minds – simple minds, most of them. One is very complex, for all Loki will so often claim it to be simple, but then it would have to be in comparison to those around it. An Aesir is a very different breed to a Midgardian, and however Thor chooses to debase his divinity Loki cannot deny him his heritage.

Still it makes him sigh, though he knows he should have expected to find himself here. _And lo, how the mighty have fallen this day: just a pretty little songbird in a gilded cage, waiting to sing what songs they think I am obliged to chirrup for them this time._

Loki probes a little further into the space around his fresh prison, catching hold of what little is yet available. The tendrils of seiðr he can manage are weak, half-formed. It does not help, that he is not fully awake even in his own mind, but he has no intention of letting them know he is surfacing before he has found his upper hand. As he seeks out the identity of the living creatures closest to him he finds it surprisingly difficult to concentrate, though he can’t quite focus on why. Generally such interference comes from the dampeners they are always trying to improve, which makes him laugh. While they tend to be more effective than Loki would have thought they ever could be, they always remain far less so than the mortals think they actually are.

Still, in between the fog and lethargy of his current state he can sense four specific minds. His brother’s, of course. And then the others – he flutters across her mind first, the roiling tempest held quiet prisoner behind the still façade of beauty and poise. Her people call her a spider; he has never thought it not to be apt. Loki suspect he perhaps might even have felt a kinship for her, if not for the cannibalistic tendencies of her namesake.

Beside her he finds the arching twisting corridors that make up the mind-palace of the man who turns into a great green beast when provoked. In that place the limbic and the cerebral are deeply entwined and yet utterly disparate, an ever-cracking emulsion of instinct and intelligence that Loki can’t help but want to take him apart just to see how that _works_.

The last is the most familiar of all. Loki has been _inside_ that mind – and such a curious place it was, the soul-centre of a creature who lives from moment to moment, who exists between pulses of that great overt-trained heart. Yet the mortal dwells both deep and true in those moments; Loki can find entire lifetimes lived in every heartbeat. Perhaps it is because he expects those heartbeats to mark so much less time than most, Loki thinks, and chuckles to himself. He’d be happy enough to oblige him in that, once he works free of whatever bonds they have chosen this time.

Loki turns his mind inward, searching his own body for the information he requires now. Lacing energy enough to skim much from the surface thoughts of the mortals, he is more frustrated to realise his own memories of the battle immediately before the blackout are vague and hazy at best. All that returns is the malicious glee of the machinations that had brought them all together: God of Mischief and Earth’s Greatest Heroes. Mentally he curls a lip at the last – he’ll ever understand why Thor counts himself amongst them. He is not Midgardian. He is not even a hero. He is _Aesir_ , and he is a god.

Gods are not heroes. Gods simply _are_.

And though Loki is divine himself, he is still trapped in this dreary earthly place. Grimacing, he realises his entire body is an aching pulse of a strange sort of pain he cannot identify. Though he does not intend to move, he passes out probing waves of thought and curiosity through his body. Nothing is damaged, nothing is wrong, though—

Shock stills his thoughts and seiðr like lightning shot directly into his heart. He hadn’t meant to move until he was good and ready, but it is too late now. A hand is already upon his abdomen. Pressing the palm down upon the muscle beneath hides its shake, though inside Loki’s thoughts have turned into one great rupturing faultline of sudden disbelief and fear.

 _I would have known_. The first thought almost holds something dangerously close to gladness, for all it is so rapidly overtaken by denial. _This is not possible. I would have **known**._

The second thought is deeper, far more insidious. And he hates himself for this even as he cannot help it. Its resultant reaction has been too deeply ingrained in him; Aesir though he is not, he had been raised as one, and barring a violent untimely death he will live a similar lifespan. It is the instinct first learned in that Aesir lifetime that has him rolling his head sideways, eyes opening as they seek the one person he had always expected to be by his side.

“ _Brother_.”

There’s a sudden widening of those blue eyes when they meet. Loki knows that look. _Guilt_ – the half-confused remorse of a puppy that knows it has done wrong, a puppy waiting for the slap of a rolled-up newspaper upon the nose. Loki grimaces, his hand tightening over his abdomen in a reflexive gesture he cannot reign in. And they are telling him to stop, the archer the widow and the brain-brawn beast, but Thor does not listen to mortals in such matters.

 _If only you could always be so sensible, brother_ , Loki thinks sourly, but then it doesn’t matter because Thor is at his side, tall and glorious column of amber and gold, his eyes the cloudless glitter of a high noon sky.

One great palm, empty of all weapons save his own lumbering foolish compassion, comes to rest upon the hand that lies at Loki’s side. He frowns, jerks. Nothing happens besides a brief spasm that Thor doesn’t even appear to notice, so slight it was. All that remains is just those damned eyes. Already Loki is sick of looking into their stupid soul-wrought reflection of every memory he ever made in a place that will never be his home again.

He closes his own tightly against everything but the darkness of his own mind. “What is this particular discourtesy in aid of, Thor? Aside from the obvious.” And though he pauses, it is only to allow himself long enough to savour his bitter chuckle. “And do spare me the posturing and the platitudes; the shield-wielding latex creature does it far more earnestly than you ever will.”

With no immediate answer given, Loki’s eyelids itch to open, to let him stare again. Yet he keeps them closed, even when Thor finally gives up an answer. “There was…an accident.”

“Don’t try to play with your words Thor, you only ever manage to break them.” Finally Loki opens his eyes, though he narrows them into slits a bare second later. “Just tell me what I am doing here.”

Through the insufficient warding of the glass between them Loki can sense a distinct uneasiness emanating from the watchful doctor. For that alone he’s almost tempted to try the limits of his bonds now, even though he has barely energy enough to pull free of his brother’s clumsy attempts at comfort. But as Thor’s grip tightens Loki tries again, and this time manages it; it sends a spark of pain sizzling up the overwrought nerves of his arm, but it’s worth it to see the agony in Thor’s eyes.

“An accident,” he repeats, as if trying to convince himself. Loki frowns.

“Did you hit me in the head with Mjölnir?” Hoping the suspicion covers the hurt, he realises it would explain the memory loss. Though he’s already mortified at the thought, and not only because he generally only allows Thor that close when it’s patently clear his brother’s torn loyalties won’t allow for such a swing to connect – and although Mjölnir is also a ranged weapon Thor’s never been able to fight him from a distance. Loki laughs at that, often and hard, even when the knowledge of it sits like a lump of clotted blood right beneath the aching atria of his heart.

“I did not,” Thor admits, eventually, and Loki screws up his nose.

“Your aim really is atrocious. How disappointed your childhood tutors would be.” It seems so pointless, so petty, but he cannot help but slyly prick him with: “Perhaps I ought to have been the one to wield it after all. My aim has always been far better than yours.”

“And your knives dig deeper than any other I have known.”

He might have thrown both hands up into the air in disgust, if not for the fact he has no energy with which to do so – and one hand seems so very reluctant to cease its cradling curve. “You’re very melancholy today, brother. I suppose some fools might find it attractive, to see your great hulking body drooping around like a kitten denied its milk. But to my eyes? Frankly, it’s disgusting. Stop it. Remember your dignity as a Prince of Asgard and a warrior both born and blooded and _stop staring at me like that_.”

And Loki starts, the sudden plea of his final words tumbling loose of his tongue in an unintended silver stream. But he can’t take them back; even with unfettered seiðr at his fingertips, Loki cannot truly play with time itself. Thor straightens, just a little, but even when he’d been beloved trusted clever baby _brother_ Loki had never been able to force Thor into the patterns of protocol for more than moments at a time.

And then Thor speaks and protocol is the last matter on Loki’s mind. “I believe you already know why you are here now. Surely you have sensed it by now.”

Those damnable eyes flick downwards, and the coldness of Loki’s realisation freezes all reply against the long lines of his throat. “ _No_. No, it can’t be.”

“I’m sorry, Loki.”

The golden hair shakes like a leaves of a weeping willow in a rising wind, and Loki feels sudden rage coiling about him like charging current. “So well you should be,” he spits out, each word lacking in thought; a moment later he bites back on the tirade waiting in its over-eager vanguard. Already this is more than he had cared to admit. But there is Thor, looming over him, and the fingers on his abdomen tighten, loosen. It is as always, flat and taut beneath the cheap Midgardian fabric. But there is something…something…

“It’s not right.”

“No,” Thor says, strikingly honest. “No, it’s not right.”

“What have you done to me?”

Again, he flinches like a child called before a parent who already holds the whip before the verdict has even been returned. “We…during the battle. You were…felled, by one of the Man of Iron’s mechanical wonders.”

Loki’s answering laughter mocks both his brother and the desperate creatures he has taken as allies. _Wonders_. How easily mortals are amused by their pathetic attempts at mimicking the reach of heaven. They barely even reach the lip of the gutters they wallow in. “And how low I am brought by these hollow men,” he says, bitter; Thor’s fingers again flex in impotent need, leaving Loki to wonder where he had left Mjölnir and why.

_But then, you know why._

Loki swallows hard on that thought, shoves a _it is not possible I would have **known**! _ in beside it for good measure. It makes no difference, not when Thor gives his own soft despairing addition.

“I could not leave you in this state.”

“In this _state_?” he hisses, and Thor flinches.

“Loki.”

“You son of a cold-hearted autocratic _bastard_.”

“Loki, we just want to help you.”

“You could _help me_ by letting me rend you limb from limb before allowing me to scatter each to the four winds and the realms. Then I suppose I might just take your entrails and wrap them three times round your still-living neck while I pour liquid fire into your eyes and _burn it all away_.” Then he catches his breath, catches his madness before it runs too far away for him to catch; when he speaks again, Loki is all cool cold contempt. “Or maybe I won’t do that. Maybe you ought to keep your eyes – for I suspect I would rather like you to watch me watching you suffer.” His tongue darts out, just a taste of dry cracked lips; there’s salt there, and iron, and he grins like a bloody wound. “Because a pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled, yes?”

“Thor. _Thor_. I think you should come back in here.”

He doesn’t even look back, ignoring the mortals simply by pretending that only he and Loki exist in this world. And Loki feels his heart swell with the glorious truth of that even as the fingers of his free hand curve into a crippled fist; he cannot help but love him, when he understands. When he remembers.

“Loki. _Please_. Let us help you.”

And he scowls; trust Thor to ruin such a promising progression within bare moments of its creation. “Touch me again and I will end you.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Yes it _does_.” His stomach roils and it _can’t be true_ it _doesn’t feel right_ but the blood in his veins is singing of birth and beginnings and fresh-wrought _life_ and _it’s not possible_ and then it spurts forth from him in a great violent lahar of revulsion and revenge. “It always has to be this way! This is our fate, this is the way the twisted dark branches of Yggdrasil have grown, and we are the rotted fruit they have born. And what else could _this_ possibly be, but another rotten seed set to grow in poisoned land under a sky of acid and fire?”

“ _Loki_.”

Thor shoves Loki’s hand away from his abdomen before it can slap down upon it – and his name is not spoken with despair, or with melancholy, or even with apology. Instead Thor is again the god of thunder, his voice a low rumble of distinct warning even as silver forks across the pale blue sky of those damnable eyes.

_Finally._

And now Loki swallows back his displayed hatred, a wolf lowering its hackles and its head before the alpha of a pack not even its own. Then he smiles. He shows his teeth, of course. But Thor is looking at his eyes instead, and he widens them just enough to make his brother’s spine stiffen.

“Thor,” he murmurs. His brother frowns, leans slightly closer, and Loki feels the snare of the trap tighten. Yet he keeps that flash of vulnerability strong and true as he purposefully makes his next words little more than a nonsense of syllables; even with ears trained to the hunt and the chase Thor clearly cannot make head nor tail of it.

_But then you never could, even when I screamed it in your face._

“What are you trying to say, brother?”

Loki moves his head back and forth, feigning exhaustion from his outburst of moments before. “I can’t…come a little closer, Thor, I have something I must say to you – _only_ you. For if what you say is true…”

And he is torn, the great lumbering fool. He actually considers it. And Loki only just turns his growing grin into a mask of sudden misery even as his stomach lazily turns again. Just because Thor says it, it does not make it true.

_I would have **known** , Norns curse the Nine!_

“It’s a _secret_.” It is a proud moment, he thinks; he has never sounded so pitiful. “I don’t think you want _them_ to hear.”

But then Thor is never quite the fool Loki convinces himself his once-brother is. Not that it matters. His brother is a fine instrument, for all even the most base of creatures could pound out a crude tune upon him. But a musician of renown and resource – oh, when such a virtuoso plays the greatest symphonies will ring out from Thor’s soul right through his skin to race across the sky like star-loosed storm.

“Thor.” Loki plays his grace note then, a trembling fermata as he presses feather-light fingers to the not-curve of his belly. “Please. Brother, _please_.”

Someone bangs on the glass. Still Thor leans down. Loki angles his head to seek beneath his hanging hair, honey dripped into an ear that has deafened itself to the growing anger of the hive beyond.

“Did you know,” Loki whispers in soft silken sadness, “that if I killed you now, it would be all right because I’d still have _just enough of you_ left to make it worth your loss?”

Thor freezes as if impaled by a Jötunn blade. And Loki smiles, arching up so that he might trace the tip of his tongue along the delicate curve one of one earlobe.

“And the best part is – this part of you that I keep, I can make it into _whatever. I Want_.”

He thinks he laughs when he closes his teeth over the soft swell of that ear and _pulls_. It’s hard to be sure, over the shouts and crashes and blaring shrieks of this pathetic place the mortals so foolishly believe to be their sanctum. Loki doesn’t give a damn, not when he has the rich taste of blood and sweat and tears and _home_ upon his lips – and he laughs harder as he realises that really almost does makes it worth the blackness he finds himself abruptly plunged into.


	3. Between The Emotion And The Response

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the pieces and pawns of the game are moved into full play.

“Don’t punch me upside the head for pointing it out,” Barton says, thoughtful and low, “but it was kind of inevitable, yeah?”

A half-turn from the window is all Thor can grant him; his eyes are fixed upon his brother alone and he will not leave him so easily. “In what way?”

“You can’t talk to a psycho like a normal human being.”

Only the pragmatism of those words keeps Thor from losing his slender grasp on his temper, which despite his weariness still sparks like uneasy bottled lightning at the back of his mind and in the tense muscles of limb and hand. “He is not a human being.”

“He’s still a psycho. My point stands.” Barton allows the briefest of pauses, then: “But I am sorry.”

A brief hand rests upon Thor’s shoulder before the archer steps back. The roiling frustration and fury is again superseded as Thor accepts the gesture at face value. While almost an entire lifetime with Loki has taught Thor that much can pass behind words without being seen nor heard, he has come to learn that the archer is prone to both straight-shooting and to solitude. It is unusual for him to accept or offer comfort, and for that Thor will respect what he has tried to do.

The truth of the matter is that Thor has found little comfort in the two days since Loki’s first awakening. They’d managed to push him back under with heavy medication and increased use of Stark’s jerry-rigged dampeners, but the Man of Iron had then almost cheerfully admitted were close to blowing out completely. Still he tinkered with them; much as he seemed to dislike Fury’s little science project, he had to admit he needed them to work.

“Fury’s going ahead with the mission,” Stark had pointed out the day before as he’d shoved the thick facemask upward, somewhere between exasperated and elated. Thor has always thought him mad, but the impression only heightens when Stark wears thick coloured glasses and wields tools of metal and light as he works the human magic men call science. “Steve and me are out of here tomorrow,” he’d added, and it had been true enough. They are gone now, and though Stark’s mechanical thrall can do a startling amount with only his master’s distant commands to guide him, Thor remains uneasy about his brother’s restraints.

Yet Banner assures them on a near-hourly basis that he now believes the pharmacological matters to be more in hand. Standing once again in the reconstructed observation room Thor watches through the glass the pale form of his brother in his unwitting hibernaculum. His strong yet slight mass is already beginning to slip away from him; a pang of concern twinges harshly in Thor’s mind when he sees the hand held over his abdomen even in sleep.

Then he has to remind himself that Loki’s overwrought body is not fighting its battles for two, but only one.

_It’s bad enough in that fashion alone, isn’t it?_

The pause his mind gives him seems almost to laugh with Loki’s voice.

 _Then again, it could always get worse_.

With a grim shake of his head Thor tries to rid himself of these thoughts; it is not in his nature to be so pessimistic, to dwell on such matters in so dark a fashion. Instead he trusts to instinct and to the trained talent of both body and the divine soul within. But that is not how this battle will be fought. He does not hold Mjölnir here on this front, but he doubts it would have much use even if he did.

“Do you think he’s faking?”

Surprise has him turning fully this time – he had expected Barton to have left the chambers. The Lady Natasha had also disappeared with Rogers and Stark to attend to the matter that had led to this passing in the first place, and given Barton had always come here in her company Thor believed the mortal would not attend again so easily.

Yet sometimes it feels as though Barton never really leaves.

“It is possible,” Thor says eventually, and Barton frowns.

“But not likely?”

“Given what’s in his system, I wouldn’t think it all that likely.” That contribution comes from Banner, who is squinting at a glowing screen as if it had turned abruptly into a unicorn and he was assessing it for violent tendencies. “But then I’ve been wrong before,” he adds, and Barton does not suppress a snort.

“No wonder you don’t work for big pharma, Doc.”

The doctor blinks at him from behind thick glasses, clearly startled. “What, because I make faulty products?”

“No, because you admit that you do.” After letting that stand, Barton cannot help an ironic tilt of his heard. “Not that it’s going to help me sleep tonight, but thanks for the heads up.”

“If you want to risk hanging around, you can make the call as to which bow you want to take to bed with you,” Banner points out, mild enough. “He should be waking soon.”

“I heard.” Though he doesn’t say who from. Thor feels only dull surprise; it had been decided that the fewer people who were present for the second awakening, the better. Considerable back-up lurks behind wall and blastdoor, but otherwise Thor and Banner had been deemed the minimum personnel necessary. But Banner doesn’t seem inclined to suggest Barton leaves, and Thor is surprised to realise he doesn’t wish it either.

“Are you really sure this is going to work?” Barton says, again surprising Thor with his atypical state of talkativeness. “Because really, it’s not like he’s a spider we just trapped in a whiskey tumbler or something. We can’t just dump him out the back door when he starts jumping at the glass and freaking us the fuck out again.”

“Didn’t know you were arachnophobic, Clint.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he says, though completely without heat. “Seriously, Doc, what’s he going to be like this time?”

“Quieter, I should hope.” The odd spark to Banner’s eyes in that moment cannot help but remind Thor of the flare of seiðr in Loki’s eyes just before he works a subtle spell. “Though there’s only one way to know,” Banner adds, and Barton rolls his eyes so far back they almost disappear into his head.

“Let me guess – trying it out. You superscientists always just _have_ to bring the mad crazy to the party, don’t you.”

“If it makes you feel any better, at least one thing seems to be holding true – he’s far more sensitive to the sedatives and paralytics when he has these hormones in his system.” Something in Thor’s stomach lurches as the man goes on, though he speaks utterly without malice. It is just curiosity and something almost like casual cruelty held in the hands of a man who only wants to know more of the way the world works. “We could probably even weaponise it, though the issue would then arise of how to activate the hormones quick enough to allow the tranquilisers to kick in.” He raises an eyebrow, two fingers upon the left arm of his spectacles as he gives Barton an appraising look that is almost warning, too. “And I’m sure Clint’s had enough practice with these things to be trusted with making the drop at the best possible second.”

“You’re the doctor, Banner. Don’t make me be your nurse. Haven’t got the legs for that, for starters.”

Thor turns his back upon the two mortals and their burgeoning pettiness, his eyes once again upon his brother. Though he tells himself to ignore the conversation and all its dark implications, still he desperately wants to hear more. That knowledge twists his stomach with hideous realisation. This is _wrong_. Though Thor has seen better than anyone the unleashed creature that is Loki’s pain and fury and fear and cruelty, when he looks at him now he cannot believe even he should deserve a fate as vicious as this.

Loki’s face is tranquil – and the simple and blissful emotion sits like a perfectly-fitted mask upon his pale skin. And yet the both the word and its physical incarnations can be twisted, mutated into something else, something more: _tranquiliser_. In that form it is something dark and dirty done to those who cannot be trusted. Those who need to be put down. It seems such a cruel irony when such creatures are said to be the ones who least deserve the tranquillity promised by such oblivion.

_Such a cruel hardening, of such a gentle state._

When he realises he is thinking like Loki, it cuts deeper than even blood and bone.

“I’ve been able to adjust the mood stabilisers somewhat,” Banner is saying, voice coming to Thor like light from a distant star. “I really think we can maintain this state for as long as it takes Tony and the Captain to sort this out.”

“Suppose that was the whole point,” Barton mutters as Thor tunes out once more. With the promise of Loki’s second awakening drawing closer by the moment, he can only focus upon the still and silent form laid etherised upon a table.

He starts when Barton speaks close to his ear. Thor cannot remember the last time someone snuck up on him like that.

Or at least, someone who wasn’t Loki.

“Why do you even bother?” Barton says, sudden and strange, and Thor is too startled to pretend otherwise.

“What?”

“Why do you bother?” he repeats, brow furrowing. “I mean, it’s not your planet. …world. Realm. Whatever.” One hand taps the glass, feather-light and near silent. “He’s not even your brother. In the end, what does it really matter to you if he destroys all of us?”

Anyone else could have spoken such words and Thor does not doubt he would have given anger in return. But a kind of cool curiosity drives the archer, leaving him half-detached from a world whose shadows he feels most comfortable in.

“Because he always will be my brother,” Thor says, allowing the simplicity of truth to underlay each word with fierce desperate gravitas. “As for your world…well. Though I might wish to say it is simply a matter of honour and brotherhood in and of itself, it is more…complicated than that.”

Barton’s silence is the pause between heartbeats, the turn of life and death upon a coin.

“He will not let me love him.” Thor’s voice turns low, sparks with wearying brontide that might never come closer than the far horizon. “And so I must engage him in battle across the land and sky of your world to prove that I hate him instead. It…it is the only way I can show him that I still care that he even exists.” Again, he pauses, skin prickling with uneasy charge. “Or at least, it is all he will believe of me.”

“You know, he calls you stupid a lot,” Barton says, finally. “But you’re really not.”

There is little pleasure in being told something he had learned bitterly for himself long ago. Still, he can take fondness in the memory of a time he cannot help but wish was not separated from their lives now by broken walls of war and pain and suffering. “It is merely his way. Even as a child, Loki always had to have his games. He never once took a straight corridor if there was a more interesting secret passage twisting behind its walls.”

And as he looks at him now, again he is startled by the terrible beauty of what almost seems to be Loki’s restored youth.

“What _was_ he like? When he was a kid?”

It seems a strange question coming from him, considering Barton usually holds himself apart from even his own world and realm. A moment later, Thor concedes it makes more sense than he’d initially have believed: this is a man without past, or at least any past he will acknowledge. Should Thor think it odd, then, that Barton would seek out those of others in order to replace that which he no longer has himself?

“He was mischief and mayhem and mad brilliant all-consuming passion,” he says, sudden and sharp and strong. “He was…Loki.”

“It doesn’t sound that different to what he is now.”

But Thor must shake his head; already his passion is leaching from him to leave his heart a rounded hollow. “No. He was… quieter, in those days. A slow-burning ember. He blazes, now.”

_And at this rate, he will burn out long before any can teach him how to burn within the constraints of all the fuel he is given._

“You know, maybe I’m just the paranoid type, and I suppose Fury never would’ve greenlighted this without knowing, but…but am I really the only person concerned about the fact that someone _else_ might be interested in Loki’s supposed condition right now?”

Thor’s brow furrows. “Who do you speak of?”

“Like, the…father?” The manner in which he scrunches up his face makes him appear a good deal younger than his true age. “Or is _Loki_ the father? But he’s the one who gets pregnant, so does that make him the mother?” One hand moves up, scarred and calloused fingers working across the scalp in contemplative circles. “You know, maybe it’s a bit late to be asking for the biology lesson and maybe I don’t even _want_ to know – but exactly _how_ is it, that Loki’s having a baby?”

The reply lodges like a stilled glacier between heart and throat. “He’s not.”

“Yeah, I know _that_.” His eyes are steady upon him. “Just humour me?”

Under the circumstances Thor would likely not have bothered, had it been anyone else. But, again – it is the honesty of him. In many ways the Hawkeye reminds him of Hogun: though his tongue is far sharper, he also is inclined to limit its use. He might seem too quick with his thoughts when he chooses to thrust them out, but he is forever deadly patience in his work.

An ache of loneliness grows within his heart, felt for those he has loved and lost. When he looks to his brother, the sensation only deepens. “Loki…is a shapeshifter, and from a very young age was exceptionally gifted with seiðr. Both allow him to do things…beyond what would be considered typical, for an Aesir of his breeding and bloodline.”

Somehow the man manages both to nod and shake his head at the same moment. “But he’s not like you.”

“No.” Though he pauses, Thor knows it would be unworthy of him to leave it there. “When his Jötunn heritage was later revealed, it explained much – to our minds, at least. Father and Mother always knew.” Now he wishes he had stopped, long fingers twisting together. “It was always considered to be just another of his oddities. He is curious about everything, and unnatural as it seemed to the eyes of Asgard it was utterly natural to him. And yet…”

“You never did say.” Where others might shift in the uneasy pause, Barton is as still watchful stone. “What happened to his other kids, I mean.”

“I do not wish to speak of such things.”

In such final silence Barton knows when to loose an arrow, and when to let the nock fall free. “Fair enough,” he says with an easy shrug, crossing his arms over his chest. Still his eyes are sharp, ever-seeking the single shot that would take out his target in clean and simple silence. “But you know, shouldn’t we be concerned her might tell…would he even want the…the father to know?”

“Loki would see no reason to discuss the matter as such, no.”

Barton processes that for a short moment. “That’s pretty fucked up,” he announces, shoulders moving again. “ _Fortunate_ , but fucked up.”

“I cannot argue with your logic there.”

“No offense, but I don’t think you and I would get far in a logic argument anyway. Blind leading the blind, yeah?”

He appears to expect no answer to that, which Thor cannot argue with because he has no answer to give. They remain in a near-companionable silence of mutual retreat into one’s self until Banner’s return. Even then little noise disrupts long moments of quiet that make up the next few hours.

While Banner works and Barton watches, Thor tries his clumsy hand at contemplation. The long muscles of arm and leg twitch uneasily, encouraging him up; they cry at him to pace, to cover constant ground even if it is only in circles. All his long life, he has thought better on his feet – or perhaps more accurately he thinks _less_ , with the pump of blood and adrenaline obscuring everything but motion and movement. Therefore it is almost punishment to be forced to such stillness.

To be forced to watch in agonising clarity the reality of what he has done.

The wakening eyes flutter, but the motion does not blink away the glassy sheen of disorientation. Thor’s body gives a reflexive jerk of disgust – yet it is directed inward and not outward, for all it is deeply unnatural to see Loki in such a state. The stark vulnerability is not even the true horror of it. That comes instead when Thor looks at him and sees the loss of his quick intelligence, the absence of the sly knowledge that outstrips that of almost all of those around him. Loki stares at him as if he can peer right through him: but not in the way he has always done before, in scorn and in disgust.

It is almost as if Loki does not recognise him at all.

“Loki?” Any hesitance in his entry of Loki’s inner chamber has nothing to do with Banner’s despairing call to return to the observation deck, has everything to do with the flare of volatile fear in those wide green-gold eyes.

“I…Thor?”

“Yes. It is I, brother.”

“I…where…” Judging by the muttering going on behind them, Banner had not expected Loki to be able to sit up so quickly. The movement is still a struggle for him, agony writ in every motion as Loki hunches over himself. Yet he shakes his head, raising a shaking hand when Thor immediately tries to answer around the lump in his throat. “I…wait. _Wait_. I’ll remember. I can _remember_.”

Thor gives him his silence even as somewhere deep inside something begins to scream.

From his place upon the table Loki examines him. One hand remains pressed to his abdomen, though he doesn’t really seem aware of the implication of the gesture. All of his attention is fixated instead upon Thor himself, the dominant emotions a spun cartwheel of confusion and wonder. Thor cannot help but stand still and aching as the eyes move over his face in shimmering paths of perplexed uncertainty. Then they reach the side and stop dead.

“Did…did I do that?”

His hand rises to his ear, the jagged tear Loki had left as a gift of all the madnesses he holds inside. Yet there is no madness in him now, just pale puzzlement. Thor grimaces, stares at the clinical white of the ground beneath Loki’s bed and his own heavy feet.

“I deserved it.”

The weight of Loki’s stare makes him look up, only to find that there is no recollection there, no memory of the blood and the laughter and the needle driven deep into blue-blushing skin. Instead Loki blinks like a child just pulled from a dream. Then his eyes widen and his hand curves low as he looks down. At such an angle Thor cannot see his face, but the tremor in his voice reverberates through him like rising earthshock.

“Then it’s…true.”

He hates himself. Still he must answer. “Yes.”

And Loki looks up, his voice now a scarce echo. “I feel sick.”

It is not disgust he speaks of – it is fear that turns his brother’s stomach, and it is writ in his eyes like a condemnation. But Thor feels revulsion enough for them both as he nods, jerky and uneven. From childhood Loki had been the talented orator, the liesmith and sly silvertongue. At this moment, he wonders at the breathtaking arrogance that ever let him believe he could twist the truth about the eyes of his brother like a blindfold of false fate and memory.

_But **was** it arrogance – or desperation?_

“You took ill, during our…battle. I insisted they bring you here.”

“My hero.”

The attempt at sarcasm falls flat, and Thor’s own words are as bitter gall upon his tongue. “Then we realised what was…wrong.”

“Wrong.” Loki rolls the word about his mouth in faint repetition; a moment later he grimaces, as if he’d bitten down only to find it wanting. “…yes. Loki Laufeyson. Always so very _wrong_.”

Thor wants to say something. He wants to correct him. And yet he is too heartsick to speak. For what feels the longest time Loki also chooses to say nothing, his eyes falling down to where his long fingers move across the flat plain of his belly, light and careful and so very filled with sudden wonder that Thor does not know how he will ever look his brother in the eye again.

“Thor?”

Even that one word is a rusty knife through his throat, leaving him hoarse and bleeding. “Yes?”

Then he looks up and Thor cannot look anywhere else as the tears standing in Loki’s eyes spill down his cheeks to match the sparking fall of a desperate whisper: “ _Don’t let them take my baby_.”


	4. Rats' Feet Over Broken Glass

It begins with pain. There is enough of it to make him scream, and he is not unaccustomed to pain. And yet, when he considers it, pain has always made him scream. He just usually does it on the inside, where no-one else may intrude. Where no-one else may even see.

In this place, this strange and strangling place that sucks from him all that he ever was and all that his child may ever be, Loki wants to open his eyes the way his damned brother thrusts doors wide apart just to enter a room and oh how he wants to _scream_.

 _Then_ , he thinks, _and then I shall take this world all to pieces and remake it anew because perhaps then I will be able to forget. I will_ hurt _, but I won’t_ remember _._

And then he realises he doesn’t even remember what it is that he is trying to forget.

When so much of one’s sense of worth is tied up in one’s mind, losing it is a great and dark loss of self and understanding. And Loki has so long laboured under the weight of his fractured soul – Jötunn by birth, Aesir by upbringing, neither now by both action and forced choice – that smoothing over these fresh cracks seems pointless when he hadn’t even been able to put himself back together the last time he had fallen so far and landed so hard.

Already some part of him is wondering why he ought to bother – and that is the part of him that had fallen from the Bifröst with utter relief singing in every relaxed muscle. The part that had looked into the Allfather’s eyes and had seen nothing but disappointment and disgust. The part that had realised that while there would be no more thought, that his brilliant and blazing mind would be lost to the burning maelstrom opening up beneath him, there would also be no more pain.

And he is in such pain. His hand twitches, the remembered action of what seems another life, separated from this one by death and by fire.

Then he remembers why he cannot let of this bridge, not this time.

That is when he gives up. That is when he starts to scream.

“Loki. _Loki_.” His brother’s hands are upon him and Loki hadn’t even realised he’d been so close by. And that brings tears, because Loki knows things. That is how Loki lives. That is how Loki _survives_. And now there is none of that but he _must_ survive and he _must_ live and even the illusion of choice is gone from him now and when he looks up to Thor his eyes are a torment of rage sorrow hate misery _love_.

“Norns curse the Nine, brother, _what have you done to me_?”

The words might have been the drive of one of his old throwing-knives deep into his brother’s heart, given the expression on his face speaks of a mortal wound. Peculiarly enough, it reminds Loki of another violent misthought thrust wrought of reaction rather than pure action. In that he feels again the rage and satisfaction and cold hard terror of the moment he had killed the Jötunn warrior who had first revealed to him his heritage that fate-wrought day in Jötunheimr.

But Thor would never be brought low by a single thrust, no matter how well-aimed or well-landed. “Are you well, brother?” Still his voice cracks over a question even he cannot help but recognise the pure idiocy of – it has always been a voice suited to such idiot purity, Loki thinks with weary antipathy. “How…how do you fare?”

“I feel as if my mind has been filtered through a singularity and left out amongst the stars to die.” The eloquent words are at odds with the constant breaking storm of thought within his mind – and a moment later Loki raises shaking hands, presses them to his aching forehead as he clenches his eyes tightly shut.

And lower, deep in his belly, another tempest of a different making rages unabated – a hurricane unable to make landfall, for it is lost at sea and without his seiðr Loki cannot find that which he searches for. He feels sick. So very, very sick.

“This should not be possible.” When he swallows, his tongue drags against the dry roof within and all words are rendered clumsy and serrated. “I was always so careful to ensure this would never happen.”

Thor is quiet. But Loki cannot help but expect that, even as his mind carols disgust at his brother’s inability to see the big picture without first scrubbing his callused fingers all over the pretty colours as if to absorb them through his skin.

“And this…” His own fingers, trembling and long – he hates that, oh how he _hates_ that; what has he to fear in this place? – go to his abdomen. It’s an idiot thought, of course. He knows what he fears.

He _knows_.

“It is wrong,” he whispers, and Thor flinches.

“I am sorry.”

“It is too late for apologies that would have made no difference even had they been more timely – not that I should think to seek such from you at any point in these proceedings,” he says, scathing even through the sandpaper rasp of mouth and tongue, the cottonwool squeak of blunted thought and knowledge. “But I am not speaking of morals.”

Thor does not say a word, speaks only with the animalistic eloquence of the eyes he had inherited from their mother.

“ _This_ feels wrong.” The palm presses down, lifeline against bellybutton, tethering anchor with its opposite end as yet adrift. “My…child. My child is _wrong_.”

Again, it is like he has driven Thor’s head down into boiling springs and even now observes a death by duality of water, of rapid boiling and slow drowning. It helps to watch him flounder. Loki himself feels he is being pulled under by the unseen currents that have brought him here, and even if Thor is all the land he can see he is content to set fire to everything upon that lone isle of false hope.

Then he remembers.

And his hand twitches.

 _Any port in a storm_.

His belly rises and falls with shallow sudden breath.

 _And here, the storm is all the port you have left_.

“We brought you here because you were taken so ill,” Thor says, eventual and miserable. “This…state seems to be taking a different toll upon you than in days of ago.”

“Yes,” he murmurs, both hands now upon his belly. And he can’t explain it, he _can’t_ — he carries in his blood the certain knowledge of his pregnant state, the sing-song lullaby of a body nurturing and nourishing that which it knows by instinct rather than by familiarity, a being as yet without a life of its very own.

But there should be mind. Never has there not been mind. Loki has always known his children from the moment of conception, yet when he now reaches out tendrils of thought and tenderness to the tiny spark of life and light within his belly, he finds only hollow darkness.

And his own head seems to be stuffed full of straw.

“Perhaps it is because of its…its heritage,” Thor says, clumsy and strange as he blunders about realms he is best not to venture through even when well-guided. “You…you have never borne such a child…have you?”

And Loki wants to say yes. He wants to scream that _yes_ , he has fucked half of Asgard’s base warriors and all of their elite, and as a consequence has birthed a darkened twisted half-rotting daisy-chain of bastard half-breeds that stretches in throttling cords about Asgard, crushing vines to twist and twine around the limbs of Yggdrasil itself as they move far and laughing from the Allfather’s greedy grasping grip.

But he cannot. Lies might come so easily in the words of any and all who speak of the once-second Prince of Asgard, but it has never been so simple to Loki himself. And now he is weary, now he is exhausted and…

And he is afraid.

His hand twitches, again.

“No.” The words are a bare whisper upon the Midgardian air that separates the two brothers. “No, I have never borne such a babe.”

“We will help you.”

The starkness of such a promise sits ill with him, and he stares with eyes locked and loaded with something between misery and disbelief. “…do you have any idea how it _feels_ to me, to be poked and probed and prodded by your mortals?”

Thor’s earnestness becomes rank silence.

“I am _violated_ ,” he says, and shakes his head as if to rid his voice of the tremor he had been unable to hide. “Everything I am, open to these low creatures of this dank and dreary realm. Why should I wish for their aid?”

Thor looks like he wishes to say something to that, perhaps to ask why Loki bothers so – to ask why he wishes to overtake a realm he holds in such disdain, regarding it as less than the dirt beneath his Asgardian boots. But then he doesn’t, and Loki is fiercely glad. Perhaps he has understood, perhaps he has not. Either way, it is enough for now.

Then he speaks and Loki thinks he has learned nothing at all.

“Would you rather be taken to Asgard?”

“In my state? Hardly.” He laughs at the mere idea, though it sets off a low ache somewhere beneath his breastbone, an emptiness of spirit to match that he still feels low in his belly. “Not that _you_ would fare much better than me in their eyes, dearest brother mine, given the role you have played in all this.”

Again Thor knows not how to parry Loki’s weapons, for all their sparring both as children playing at war and as adults waging it in bitter ouroboros. His silence is pregnant and pained. Loki feels he should revel in his brother’s agony. But then, suddenly, it comes to him: the recollection of passion and pleasure, the former as forbidden as the latter was heady. It moves across his skin like storm; damp and electrified, all of it pure elemental force that had torn through them both like death.

And from it, _life._

His hand moves against his abdomen again – and Loki sighs, dark and low. Such guilt is worn strange and solid upon his shoulders, and yet he knows not how to shrug it away.

“But then I was the one to force the matter,” he murmurs, and Thor begins to chew his lip in a manner Loki has not seen since they were very young. He’d tended to do it as they waited together to be called before the Allfather to make their excuses for some high-spirited prank gone wrong. So often such things had been Loki’s idea, but so often would they never have worked if not for Thor’s enthusiasm in seeing the act through to its realisation, to its inevitable conclusion.

“Do you regret it?” His voice is dreadfully small, out of scale to the great hulking body he wears so easily. Though he seems ill-fitted now, shrinking before Loki’s eyes.

“What have I to regret?” he asks, thrusting one palm upward even as the other stays over his belly, as if trying to leech from within the aching emptiness he cannot help but be so afraid of. “Regret is a wasted emotion.”

But Thor is wasted by it, his ravaged eyes watching him with remorse tucked tight into every crack and bleeding wound cut through the brilliant blue that cannot help but make Loki remember the blue skies of their home.

And even broken as he is, Loki cannot look at that. He cannot look at _him_. Turning away, he keeps his head low.

“I see they have not collared me.” With the change in subject, disgust colours his words in new fashion – and with it comes the remembrance of the death and destruction wrought across this mortal world the last they had tried such a thing.

“No,” Thor winces, memory clear enough in his mind to be read in his eyes, when Loki chances an arch glance backwards. “It doesn’t matter, you know. There are dampeners all over the facility, to achieve a similar end. You would need your seiðr to get beyond them.”

“Ah, such a lovely little paradox they do weave. I require my seiðr to go beyond this barrier, but I shall have no seiðr until I have already crossed the threshold. …truly, I shouldn’t complain. It’s certainly far more elegant than collaring me like a dog. A logical fallacy, perhaps, but rather elegant all the same.”

Thor looks like he wishes to say something else. Instead he blurts out two words, childish and sudden. “Please stay.”

And Loki frowns. Usually he likes it when his brother begs. In the mud, on his knees, trying hard to please – and that is a memory he cherishes, for all it is a wraith of days long past, those that should have been long forgotten.

But while Loki feels he has forgotten so much else, this he cannot forget. With his hand upon his belly he turns with a grimace, head still so empty and yet filled with sawdust. He wonders if he will ever think properly again.

And still his hand rests over the space beneath. Call it a lifeline, he thinks miserably, even as he knows there may be nothing to grasp the end he has thrown outward into the darkness he carries within. The next words are scarcely more than a whisper.

“Why do you wish to aid me, after all that has passed between us?”

Thor steps forward, and Loki flinches. He does not like to be touched. Something in every contact had always felt wrong, even as a child. After the blue-bitter realisation upon Jötunheimr, he knows now why that is.

But then Thor’s touch had never felt wrong. Neither had his mother’s. But he fears both now, even as Thor puts a hand behind his neck and pulls their foreheads close together. It is a motion from childhood, from sun-filled days of fraternal camaraderie.

But the trembling fingers against his belly are those of the demi-god grown, a creature of lightning and thunder who consumes Loki with light and with sound, the storm that remakes the world anew but must destroy everything in its path first. And such cleansing fire is always so much quicker and more brutal than the slow growth of the forest that will eventually rise from soot and from ash to once again reach for the sky that it will never ever quite be able to touch.

“Because this is between us,” Thor says finally – and for all his power, all his strength, his voice trembles. “Because I do not wish you hurt by this.”

“You promise, then?” Loki says, hoarse, and Thor swallows hard.

“Haven’t I already?”

“Do it again.”

And then he is on one knee with pale fingers pressed to golden forehead and his voice on fire as he intones: “I swear that I, Thor Odinson, shall let none come between my brother and the child he bears he bears this family.”

He trembles, cracking column of cold ice. “This is no family.”

“We are always family.”

“And the Allfather?”  Thor looks up at him now, blue eyes the wide-open expanse of Asgardian sky at high noon. “What shall you do, when he comes to claim this monstrosity?”

The golden head shakes, single and simple. “He might be the father of all, but he is not true father to your babe.” Both hands are in his brother’s now, and his lips are warm and firm against his knuckles. “He shall not have this child. This I swear to you, Loki. This I swear to _you_ , brother mine now and always and forever.”

The ache of it settles deep in his bones. It is perfect pain without any pleasure. He knows he ought to enjoy this: his brother on his knees and his head bowed, utterly devoted and miserable in his service. Loki feels only weariness instead, and the overwhelming need to sleep.

Yet he does not think even that will chase away the emptiness. Nor even the loneliness. And he cannot even think only of himself anymore.

Then, into the silence, comes words from neither.

“So it’s agreed then? You stay here and don’t give us any grief, and we’ll keep the big bad wolf from your door?”

This new addition, spoken from the doorway, has Thor rising to his feet, Loki turning to see what his brother has already identified. He stops. He stiffens. The voice is wrong. The face is wrong. Yet both set him alight, sets him flying across the room with hands like claws and his teeth bared in a wolf’s feral furious feeding snarl.

“ _You will not have my child, Allfather_!”

There is still a shred of logic left to him, something of the sanity of the days when Odin Allfather had been _his_ father, beloved stern figure of both authority and love. But those days are gone, and logic goes with them as Loki loses himself again. His blood is no longer a current of cradle-song and cracking curiosity, but instead a river of rage roused in a clarion call to arms. His heartbeat is that of a war-drum, steady and fixed. But there is no formation, no formality in this attack. All Loki feels now is the berserker desire to rend and rape and ream until he everything is awash in blood and death and the sweet victory of leaving life only to those creatures which deserve its glory.

Then his brother’s arms are around him, warm and withholding. They do not merely hold him back. There is a rocking motion, like the ocean. But then: not. Instead he finds a memory, but not one he has lost himself. It seems more a memory he should not ever have had in the first place. There is the gentle sway of a cradle in a garden of light and laughter, and within: a tiny dark-haired babe, ten tiny toes and ten tiny fingers and dreaming half-closed eyes of bright green in a face as pale as the slumbering moon hidden behind the blue sky high above. And the golden sun beams down, brilliant counterpart to the soft song of mother and child.

And his anguish is like an arrow fletched with the instinct of roused maternal rage, just waiting to be loosed straight into the heart of the monsters that would creep into the sanctuary from the shadows beyond.

Thor’s words are strong against his racing pulse. “Brother,” he says, thick and desperate, fingers leaving bruises upon hip and wrist, “brother, please, think of the child!”

And Loki goes limp, his laughter the bitter darkness of Valhalla lost. “Brother,” he says, flat and empty, both hands upon his belly now, “oh, brother, _I can think of nothing else_.”


	5. Eyes I Dare Not Meet In Dreams

The worst thing, Thor thinks, is the way his brother laughs now. It is uncertain, somehow, and higher-pitched. Gone is the quick and sly laugh of his trickster-brother, and in its place is the uncomfortable giggle of chattel left to a room full of strangers.

It is the mortals’ workings that have done much of it. “He adapts to the medication very quickly,” Banner has pointed out numerous times, as often in despair as in fascination, and in the week since the last incident Fury has forced the dosage up and up until Loki seems little more than a shallow puddle of confused memory and desire, his hand curled about his abdomen in constant watchful disquiet.

But this is not just the work of the mortals, Thor knows. His brother is a fretful pendulum swinging back and forth between the dizzying heights of madness and gladness, pausing at each while sliding too quick through everything else for it to matter – and it is not the mortals who keep pushing him higher and higher.

Thor clenches his hands tight, but Mjölnir is not between them. It will come to his hand if he calls. But he is not worthy of its power, not in this. In fact, he rather wishes its weight would crush him to the ground instead.

 

*****

 

_“Put him under again,” he commanded, clipped and clinical. “I’m pulling the plug on this little charade.”_

_Banner opened his mouth to complain, but Fury cut him short with one short sharp cut of his hand._

_“Nothing about this scenario is following the projections,” he added, though he then paused; when he went on, his mouth had almost quirked into a smile. Nothing in his one visible eye echoed anything of the sort. “Well, except for the fact Loki really does seem far more susceptible to tranquilisation when he’s pumped full of hormones. Just put him under twenty-four seven, and we’ll all pray we can keep him that way until Stark and Rogers get back.”_

_There had been little word on that mission – at least, little word that had been shared with Thor. He grimaced, shook his head as he looked at the pale shaking form of his brother: he lay strapped to the table where all this had began, an insect waiting for the chloroform and classification. There could be no dignity in such a death, no glory or honour, he thought. It will simply render Loki as just another specimen, and at the study’s end he will be stored alone and in the dark like so much forgotten legend and lore._

_“I cannot allow it.”_

_“You’re not in a position to allow anything,” the director pointed out. “You are not the one whose head he just tried to take off, magic or no magic.”_

_“He was quite peaceful with me until you startled him,” Thor replied, and Fury almost rolled his one eye._

_“But he’s jumping at shadows – more than that, he’s going for the_ jugular _of said shadows.”_

_“You reminded him of our father.” When this explanation appeared insufficient, Thor frowned. “The Allfather has never taken kindly to Loki’s…aptitude, for the bearing of children.”_

_And for the first time he began to realise it likely had always had much to do with the fear of Loki’s heritage being found out. Thor hadn’t lied when he’d spoken to Barton of how most had assumed his peculiar fertility to just be part and parcel of Loki’s games. As their token god of mischief, his terrible affinity for magics not designed for his body had just been seen as another quirk unsuited to Asgard’s second son. In the end, Thor believed now it likely had always been his Jötunn heritage demanding an out._

_“And so he saw the one eye and automatically went for the kill?” Fury snorted. “That still doesn’t give me any comfort. Because somehow I doubt I look much like your daddy in any other respect, and if his mind’s already that far gone in the old recognition software I think it’s best we go right ahead and shut the whole motherfucking system down.”_

_“I do not know your metaphor,” Thor replied with deep dignity, “but I will not allow you to put my brother down like a dog in the name of sheer convenience.”_

_Surprisingly, it was Banner who suggested otherwise._

_“To be honest, I wouldn’t recommend it either.” His fingers played upon the arm of his spectacles, mild manner so very at odds with the uneasy creature of slumbering chaotic potential lurking beneath. “I have been able to adjust things, of course. Half the issue last time was that his threshold of consciousness was a lot lower than I thought – he was awake long before I realised it.”_

_Thor frowned, deeply unsettled. “He…was listening to us?”_

_“Yes and no.” And in his refusal to place concrete definitions upon the fluid systems of even ordered chaos, Banner almost reminds Thor of Loki. “It’s…more a metabolic thing. His body instinctively tries to process and purge anything alien to it. His sorcery_ is _limited by the dampeners, sure, but he’ll still do it just with the innate sorcery we can’t subdue. And from the conflicting data I’ve gathered, his sleep can both retard and augment his metabolism – and I haven’t been able to predict the rate of change or what flips that switch.”_

_Fury’s scowl could have set a galaxy aflame with half a dozen supernovae. “Meaning?”_

_“The seiðr wards Stark generated and left behind ought to hold – certainly JARVIS seems content, and the feedback Stark’s sent me agrees, in between all the jokes about BDSM and Robot Unicorn Attack.” Banner had taken his glasses off entirely, and somehow without them he has aged a decade. “Yes, we could keep him under. But it would be far easier to assess and monitor his state when he’s awake, given it can change so rapidly and catastrophically. …because honestly, do we even know how long this is going to take, yet?”_

_Fury’s frustration was a palpable thing, a gauntlet thrust between them. He did not insist on Loki’s return to stasis. But even Thor had felt a tremor of deep unease when Fury had met and held his gaze to demand his oath._

Make this work _, that single eye said_ , or by Christ we will **all** be the ones to pay for what we have and have not done.

 

*****

 

They are deep in a Midgardian night lit only by city lights and no stars, and Loki sleeps again. Thor is in the kitchen though he is beginning to forget what true hunger feels like. The Pop-Tart boxes are stacking up on all counters, having outgrown the pantry and several cupboards usually reserved for both dinnerware and the appliances Stark leaves around for the sheer joy of watching Rogers struggle to operate them. Not that Thor knows who has been purchasing the sweet treats in such abundant quantities, for all he understands why they do it.

He just doesn’t care – or, at least, as he sits in the dark he wishes that he didn’t. Surely such a state would be easier than this one.

The light flips on and someone moves in the fresh light they have wrought. Thor is silence itself even though he knows he cannot be missed. Even if not for his sheer size, Thor knows he is not the kind of person one might easily disregard no matter their wish. That is why he cannot be surprised when the other sits across from him, though he starts when something is pushed until it rests ice-cold against his fingers. He jerks back, and his companion snorts.

“Sorry.” Then, a moment later: “You know, I’m not an ice-cream man myself, but Tash swears by it.”

Thor could go on pretending to ignore him. But it is not dark in here anymore and he is not alone and he’s never been prone to sulking in silence anyway. That had always been Loki’s trick – and whenever Thor had tried to work it himself, Loki had always been there to tear his efforts asunder.

And so Thor pokes at the little barrel of brightly-coloured and fortified paper, and frowns. He recognises it; both Jane and Darcy had claimed the stuff to be the work of Satan, though why they kept such devil’s work in their freezer in varying quantities had always mystified him. Whenever he’d thought to ask for their reasoning, however, both had taken on a look so very reminiscent of Sif in full berserker battle mode that he’d just let it lie.

He sees nothing of that in Barton now, and feels free to frown as he pokes it again. “I thought women did not much care for this?”

“Depends how pissed off they are,” he says with weary wisdom, and nudges a spoon closer. “Try it.”

With a shake of his head, Thor looks away from both the little paper barrel and the archer who had offered it. “I am fine.”

“Whatever.” For a while he busies himself with his own treat, and when he speaks again his voice is no less sharp for all his mouth is half-full. “So who’s going to tell him, in the end?”

He’s startled enough to be drawn into meeting the man’s eyes. “What?”

“Because this is going to have to end one way or another.” Even though the fact he’s sucking on a spoon ought to make him look and sound ridiculous, Thor is uncomfortably reminded of the easy lethality of how the man holds his bow, its quiver, and the array of arrows within. “And you know, I’m kind of getting the impression you’re not enjoying this enough to make it last much longer.”

“I never enjoy hurting my brother.”

The worst thing isn’t that this is not entirely true. It’s that there’s a tilt to Barton’s eyes that suggests he realises that. The man puts down his spoon, leans back in his chair, and levels an entirely speculative gaze upon him.

“Look, I’m usually the first to put my hand up and say your brother’s generally a big bag of dicks, but…”

Thor doesn’t think his voice has trailed off to provide opportunity for objection to his terminology, but he offers it all the same. “I know my brother has wronged you,” he says, stiff and flat, “but I will not listen to you speak of him in such a manner before me.”

“See, that’s the _problem_.” Barton’s glaring at the little barrel now, and Thor feels suddenly glad he hadn’t bothered with it; he’s really only tasted it once – it comes in an alarming range of colours and apparent flavours – and somehow he’d not taken a shine to it. But then Barton keeps talking and he has to look up, finding the man all but vibrating with frustration. “It’s not that this isn’t working the way anyone thought it would. Fuck, if only it _were_.”

Then he lapses into silence again, which Thor can understand in principle. This is a man who works alone, the member of their team who so often covers them from above and from behind, the watchful eyes up high in his lonely eyrie. Thor has always respected that, and he thinks that is why it feels so discourteous to ask his question in such a fashion. But it burns his tongue, demands to be spoken aloud. “Why are you here? This is not your battle. There is no need for you to involve yourself any further in this…situation.”

Any offense he might have taken rolls away as easily as oil upon water when the archer shrugs, shoulders as fluid in casual lethargy as they are in raging battle. “Too late. I’m already involved up to my neck – I was even before I asked Coulson to assign me this watch.”

“This…” His brow furrows, the words like burrs stuck in his craw. “…this is not an _assignment_.”

“Babysitting Loki? Sure it is. You were the default agent, as it happens, but I thought you needed a partner. Coulson agreed.” One hand rubs over his hair, his sudden odd grin both slight and lopsided. “So when someone tells you miracles never happen, tell them I call bullshit.”

Though he knows that Barton’s offhand nature is simply that – his _nature_ – somehow the implication still stings. “I can do it alone.”

“That’s my line,” he replies, whipcrack-fast as all humour evaporates. “ _I’m better off alone._ And, by the way, Natasha’s response to that usually is: _you don’t have to be_.”

This time Thor cannot speak. He just stares at the mortal seated across from him, booted feet now propped upon the table beside his empty circular carton. Though Barton might appear relaxed to any other eye, Thor knows enough both of the man and of the body of a warrior to see the constant tautness in mind and muscle, the ever-watchful tension of a man who expects the choice of life or death to hang upon the outcome of a single moment’s action or inaction.

And then he shrugs. “It’s okay if you don’t believe it. Usually I don’t either.”

When Thor finds words enough to speak, they are heavy and hoarse. “So why should I believe you now, when you won’t even take the Lady Natasha’s word for it?”

“Because I know something about the brother thing.”

“Oh?”

Barton now screws up his earlier grin into something that could never be identified as anything of the sort, much in the way a contortionist might in some ways appear something other than merely human. “Well, it’s no-where near your particular league, yeah? But no matter the players running around it, the ballpark’s always laid out just the same.” This time his eyes drop, and callused fingers have tightened upon the rounded muscle of his upper arms. “I…I just don’t _like_ it, okay?”

Thor frowns, though perhaps not for the reason Barton might believe. “It?”

“It’s…” The man’s voice trails off, but Thor cannot complain. He himself is not a master of oratory; words are not his gift. He feels sudden empathy for the archer as he seeks words to match the great clear picture in his mind, and grimaces deeper. “It’s just unfair.”

Something like gladness wraps around Thor’s heart then, but it could as easily be pain. It feels much the same, these days. “What makes you say that?”

He looks up. This time, Barton’s words are stark, simple – and deadly swift. “Because sometimes he’s _happy_.”

And they strike Thor’s heart in its deepest centre, so hard that he loses all breath.

“That’s just not _fair_ , you know? You’ve said yourself that he’s spent most of his life being told he’s something that he’s not.” Again he pauses, the nervous twitch of finger and the rapid blink of eye utterly at odds with the still watcher of SHIELD’s conjured shadows. “Maybe to the others, that’s just karma running over his dogma. And Christ knows maybe he _does_ fucking deserve it. I of all people shouldn’t feel sorry for him.”

Denial will not come to Thor’s lips, not when he knows the truth of such declarations. But still he cannot look away. “And yet you pity him all the same?”

“I know what it’s like to want a family – to want the one you used to have, even.” This time Barton drops his eyes, fingers beating out a rough staccato upon the table. For some reason, he makes Thor wonder what instrument he might play, if he could. “And I get the feeling Loki misses his, no matter what he says.”

Thor comes over as cold as a winter upon Jötunheimr: dark and long as lives lived beyond even that of the Aesir themselves. He has to close his eyes. It only strengthens the illusion, imprisons him deeper in icy regret.

“And I know you said you didn’t want to talk about his other children—”

Thor’s hand comes down hard upon the table between them. “No. I don’t.”

In the quiet that follows Thor knows he owes Barton at least this much – and so he opens his eyes to meet the archer’s. They are unblinking now, even and watchful. A moment later he gives a brief nod, a soldier’s acknowledgement of the inevitability of the task ahead.

“I kill. I admit that.” Then his lip curls in a brief upward motion, bearing the weight of no amusement at all. “But I do it with one clean shot, or I don’t do it at all.”

Thor can only stare as the man stands, flicks his eyes to the door, and then looks back.

“And as far as I’m concerned, this one was missed long ago.”

Then he turns to move back to his shadows, and in a heartbeat is gone.

When Thor rises the ice-cream Barton had brought him has long since melted. He ignores it. Rogers is not here to complain of the mess in the kitchen and the Son of Coul has long since abandoned that front, but none of that matters now.

The only thing that does matter is his need to see Loki. There is no trick to finding him, not now; he sleeps still where Thor had last seen him in the small chamber that is now more nest than mortal room.

Thor is both relieved and unsettled to see that Loki appears to not have moved an inch since. Of course he had exhausted himself by crying half the afternoon away – there had been a miscalculation in his hormones, leaving him a sobbing mess that no-one had known how to deal with. And it had been so at odds with only a day ago, when Loki had sat in the kitchen with his hand over his belly, and his eyes wide with sudden hope as words spilled like warm spring rain from smiling lips.

_Oh! I have not even thought of a name! What shall we name him, brother?_

There had been no talk of emptiness then, just a trilling laugh echoing from tile and window. Thor remembers now Barton’s wince, the way Banner had excused himself. It had left Thor and Loki alone at the table while Loki sing-songed his way through almost every Aesir name he knew and some he did not.

Barton had spoken so recently of happiness, and in a way Loki has been happy. But the manner of it is like nails driven through feet and palm, because Loki has once again become his shadow. He’d played and pretended at liking it as a child, Thor knows now, yet in these days, his confusion and disorientation make him almost pathetically grateful for the company of his brother. The closeness of the one responsible for all this.

There’s a memory in that, of days long ago when Loki had taken ill of a fever. They’d been only children, and for all his delicate appearance might have logically led to a less than robust constitution, that was the first and last true illness to strike him down – and it had terrified Thor. Before his eyes his brother had vanished into a shell of another creature, leaving only a mere husk of his once-self.

And then there had been Loki’s fever dreams of snow and of ice. Then Thor had believed them due to the terrifying heat of his brother’s skin. He thinks now with dull clarity perhaps it was something of his Jötunn heritage warring against the Aesir physicality it had been forced into, worn as a mere mask not of his own making.

Loki feels that way to him now – peculiar and strange, an empty simulacrum. While Loki himself is very clever with his vardøgr, none of this is his own work. Instead _Thor_ has helped create this monstrosity, this creature who swings between placid and panicked and pained and peculiar. And though his regret is a raging river tearing through all in its path had it been a mere puddle he’d still had gladly drowned himself in its shallow depth.

As Thor watches him now the realisation strikes him hard and low in his own gut. He’d thought the worst thing about Loki now was the false laughter at the jokes he does not understand any longer.

But when Loki wakes, Thor finally knows true agony. Because when his eyes open, when he turns his head, there in his eyes is great shining pleasure – because he presses both hands to his abdomen and smiles in perfect love and perfect trust even as Thor knows that his fingers move in innocent ignorance over the broken promise of an empty womb.


	6. More Distant And More Solemn Than A Fading Star

He has forgotten how to read.

Oh, he remembers the shapes and the forms; he would even without the All-Tongue to augment the more scholastic understanding Loki had taught himself long ago. As a natural polyglot he accumulates such information with gleeful greed, the way Midgardian entomologists joy in their collections of dead creatures mounted upon boards: they are all just colourful corpses just waiting to spill their secrets to the educated eye.

No, it is not the act of reading he had forgotten.

It is the skill of understanding that this half-cursed state has stolen from him.

Then he grimaces, leans forward over and about his abdomen. No matter what has brought this about, no matter this place that he is now prisoner to, he cannot resent the child itself. Even if he cannot feel it, save for in only the most vague and fleeting sense of _fullness_ in blood and brain.

Still he thinks he should be angry. So much of who he is comes from the quick tongue and the quicker mind he had been gifted at birth; said mind gives his mouth words to both to voice and to weaponise. Losing both leaves him directionless and defenceless, floundering in unfamiliar waters, weighted down by troubles he cannot even see. The book he holds in his hands is blurred, words running in rivulets as if it had bathed in this same dark river, and he closes his eyes. There is a crack, the spine of the book breaking under duress, and his nails are filled with ink and paper.

Nothing changes. His seiðr is not gone, still it roils inside him, but they have muted it. They have muted _him_. And he fears that, this thing that should not be.

They have never understood, these little Midgardian souls that flare so bright and then burn out. Those of the other realms are the slowburn of near-immortality, their power more deeply ingrained in their superior flesh.

 _They named us gods_ , he thinks, remnants of the ruined book fluttering to the ground, _and yet they think to tame me, to hold me…they do not understand that we barely do as much for ourselves._

The thin veneer of civilisation lies uneasily over his kind, Jötunn and Aesir alike. They do it not pretend as such for mortal eyes. In Asgard they are all as gods, from the lowest tier to the dizzying highest, and should they all surrender to the divine edicts of their immortal souls then they might then streak across the sky in arching starscream quasars of pure elemental force – and then the universe would crack beneath their glory, thin shell split asunder to reveal the bleeding flesh of ages beneath.

It is the code of the warrior that holds them still, gives them principle and purpose. Heimdall, the Watcher, he who knows all – he could take the realms and make them anew with all that he knows of them, the puppet-master pulling his strings until all danced to his casual tune. And yet his near-omniscient power is fettered in service to the Allfather, he who sits upon Hliðskjálf to watch those same realms with one eye and his hands held still by honour and by the greater duty he has thrust only upon himself.

Loki remembers sitting in that same place, Gungnir to hand and his eyes filled with the worlds. In that, his helmet had been less than a symbol of power than a rounded weight upon his mind, a shield to hold the knowledge within rather than letting it explode through his fingers and eyes and laughing wild words.

That is why the Aesir did not care for him, even when they believed him Asgardian. Loki’s power had been different from the beginning; raw and unbridled, he brought his enemies low by sparking seiðr from fingertips instead of giving clean death with a sword. He fought, but was no warrior. He did not even abide by the code of such. Instead he was the mischief-maker, with mayhem stalking close behind every jest, every turn of the tongue.

And then there had been the _malice_ just simmering beneath, waiting to boil over. He feels it even now. He wants to heat it. Molten metal needs as little as a drop of water to superheat and explode. But for all he feels as if he drowns, in that alone he feels as if in drought.

Loki is a god amongst insects, but they march about him in their hive consciousness building and breaking and fucking and birthing and living and dying while he is as a stone idol. They see him but he does not matter, their tributes to his greatness little more than withered flowers and rotten fruit at his motionless feet as he moves not upon his pedestal.

Restless now, Loki abandons the library and the books he cannot read. Knowing that Thor had said he would be sparring, he grimaces and turns towards the laboratories. The grey-suited man rarely speaks to him directly, and when he does it is usually repeat some reiteration of rules Loki cannot imagine applying to him. There is the ever-watchful archer, whose blue eyes make him uncomfortable in ways he cannot understand. He seeks neither. It is the creature who is in charge of preserving his health and that of the tiny life within him that he wants now.

He never sees any of the others. That bothers him, upon occasion. But then he cannot imagine they would be much help, and he knows the smooth-accented voice that occasionally bothers him in his wanderings is the Man of Iron’s proxy. The restraints of that mortal’s dampening device, invisible and pervasive, ripple over his skin all the more when he presses against their limits. Had things been different, Loki would not have cared. He would have pressed up against them and laughed until he burned or the device exploded or the entire world folded in upon itself.

In this state, he cannot risk it.

With his hand upon his responsibility, Loki enters the laboratory. The doors allow it with easy grace, though he feels a prickle of resentment; he would never be permitted entry had the damned mechanised thrall not calculated the harm he could do within this place and found it within acceptable parameters. He trails fingers over one bench and the glittering glass and platinum apparatus upon it, grimacing. The man-beast has not looked up from his work though Loki knows that all eyes in this place are ever-watchful.

“How am I to trust you?” he says, sudden and stark as his fingers pause on the bulbous curve of heated glass. “I cannot even feel my child move.”

The man pauses before his screen; when he turns, his eyes are both curious and cautious. “It’s early, yet.”

“And this is why I dislike this situation as much as I do.” Crossing his arms over his chest, hating that he appears more nervous than imperious, Loki sets his jaw hard. “You know nothing about my physiology, nor even about how I am able to become pregnant in the first instance. So how can you assure me of anything?”

The doctor’s fingers twitch, but his eyes are dark and steady. “There are…similarities, enough.”

And Loki purses his lips, steps closer. “I would know more of how you aid me.”

The closing proximity leaves the man deeply uncomfortable. That knowledge prickles across Loki’s skin with the faintest hint of accompanying adrenaline; though this man holds the beast within shackled with a control that even Loki must admire, he cannot ignore it forever. And that makes Loki happier, somehow, even in his confusion – because something about that fog of confusion seems to be lifting. Maybe it is because he feels purpose, either in baiting the man or seeking knowledge from him. He’s not creating pain, not exactly. But this poking has roused the mortal and Loki…

…Loki likes that.

“I need my seiðr.”

“Your sorcery?” The man-beast seems unsure; Loki might have laughed at that, had he the energy. In some ways he’s actually quite charmed by the creature and what he has made of himself; intelligence and animal instinct in the same package. Two disparate halves in one tortured whole.

Again his hand drifts to his belly. Yes, a fascinating creature, this one. And Loki knows exactly why he finds him so. With those fingers hovering just above a creature forged from those same two elements in deep abundance, Loki nods sharply. “Without it, I cannot monitor the child. I require my seiðr for my child’s wellbeing.”

“Even if that’s true, you know it’s not going to happen.” Loki feels his mouth twist in ugly half-helice as the man-beast doctor gives something one could barely even name a shrug. “It’s not even my call.”

 “I thought you were my physician.”

“Unfortunately, the health insurance in this place is pretty limited when it comes to patient choice of treatment. I think you just have to take what you can get.”

The mild manner beats at Loki’s patience, and his fingers twitch as he calls upon seiðr that will not answer. He would not need it, not to summon the beast – but then, he would need it to remove himself from the path of the chaos he would wring from everything in immediate radius. Letting his exhaustion take his body if not his mind, Loki drops down into the nearest seat to glare daggers across the room. “You do not even understand why my brother feels obligated to aid me.”

“Hope.”

The rapid answer makes him jerk, words deserting him utterly. “ _What_?”

“I rather think it’s hope, yes.” Peaceable, the doctor-beast-man lets his eyes flick back to the screen hovering before him, fingers again rising in the dance of childish science cum sorcery the mortals are so proud of. “Look, I don’t understand what passed between you, either as children or as adults. But I _have_ seen enough since to realise that neither of you are willing to let that go.”

“You know _nothing_.”

“But neither are you willing to just lay down your weapons and admit it.” Loki’s serpentine hiss has not disturbed him, and again he continues about his work with a half-hearted shrug. “I would say it’s none of my business, but when it spills over onto our home turf, then you’ve made it that way.”

“So you say my brother keeps me here in the hopes that his salvation of my child will endear himself to me?”

“You do seem to need proof of his affection, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I mind very much,” he says; it is conversational enough, but when his fingers clench the nails rake deep grooves into even the industrial surface below. “And if my brother were not so blindly noble and gallant, this feted golden prince charging in to all sundry upon his white steed, then I might even believe that this is _exactly how he wanted it to be_.”

This garners a reaction – the man has turned to stare at him, fathomless eyes calm for all Loki recognises his stillness not as serenity, but as tightly held control. And Loki smiles, his own control bitter for all it is beautiful.

“I’m bound to him. Dependent upon his will and whim to ensure the safety of my child – for I must assure you, mortal, that should any harm befall my child then I would tear apart this realm in order to have it serve as a worthy funeral pyre.” He digs his fingernails deeper into the grooves already carved, wonders if mortals can hear an inanimate object scream. “Have you ever seen a world burn, Doctor?”

This time he actually looks away. “We are doing all we can.”

“Yes, I know. And you had better hope that it is enough, now you have chosen to take the responsibility for it.” Again, he feels only hollow empty answer when he calls to the child of his body, but there is satisfaction in baiting the mortal instead. “Such is the price of friendship.”

And he turns back to his work, jerky with his head bent low. Loki lets the silence stand for a moment, then gives a little chuckle.

“Of course, for you I think, it is more the pleasure of the knowledge you gain from me. And I cannot argue with such a…scholastic sentiment.”

“All knowledge is a gift.”

“All knowledge is power,” Loki says to his back, too amused to be insulted by his discourteous manner when addressing a god. “And if I were you, mortal, I would think carefully upon that which you seek. You might know my body, but you will never know my soul.”

He swings around, hand tight upon the glasses he has removed. “I never presumed to.”

“There is something else I would have you know – and you may take this as free.” Resting his chin upon his laced hands, Loki leans across the table and smiles. “If my brother intends to take my child from me after it is born, then all the children of this earth will suffer for the loss of mine.”

“Your brother would never hurt a child.”

“Do not presume to think you understand my brother.” It’s all very pleasant, Loki thinks; rather like a tea-party, but with foxglove instead of orange blossom in the teapot. And he smiles wider. “Sometimes I think you do not realise what he is. Other times…I know.”

“He is our ally.”

“He is a god.” Magnanimous he is not, but Loki traces an almost kind finger across the desk in a parody of a knight’s opening move. “As am I. And we play the long game – and this realm, it is but one board upon which we move our pieces.”

“You’re the one who likes the games.”

“Oh, Thor likes them too,” he says, almost disdainful. “Must I use a mortal metaphor? Think of my game as chess, and his as…how do you call it? Football?” The beast-man’s frowning but Loki grins wider. “Both are games. I break minds. He breaks bones. Together, we might break the World Tree itself apart at its very base, spilling the poisoned waters of Urðr across all the realms until reality itself is drowned.”

“He would never hurt your child,” he repeats, and Loki laughs; he is a clever man, this one, but he is and only ever will be a _man_ – or just a beast who is even less mind to muscle.

“But would he take it from me, do you think?” Loki says, voice carefully idle. “Is that why I am here? Because he believes that the child would be better off with him than it would be with me?”

The doctor-beast goes very, very still. And yet every atom of his body vibrates, so very close to the resonant frequency of rage and freedom. _One little push_ , he thinks, _one little push, and – chaos. Destruction. Mayhem to overrule all the weak mischief that is left to you now._

But Loki does not do it. “You can hold your silence. There’s time enough, after all.” And he cannot feel regret, even though he cannot feel the child he restrains himself for. “But let me tell you one last thing. …May I tell you one last thing, mortal thing?”

“I rather imagine you will no matter what I say.”

“Good boy,” he says with clear approval, though his smile is of no comfort to the mortal man-beast. “You might think that this child should suffer most from what I have given it in life from my own. But in its veins courses already the blood of its father – and with it, the sins of its father.” His tongue moves out, traces lightly over one lip. “For he _has_ sinned. Do not doubt that.”

When the mortal looks at him now, his eyes hold the weary knowledge of one who has been to war not only with the world, but with himself – and the latter had cost him far more than the former. “There are no true innocents.”

“No.” Loki pauses, and when he licks his lips again he thinks he can taste blood. It pleases him, in a perverse way, that he does not know whose. “It really is my deepest regret, when it comes to this realm – such creatures are those who will shatter into the most pieces, after all.”

When Loki walks away it is with his head held high and a hand over his abdomen. But even though that had been the most satisfyingly coherent conversation he has had since awakening in this place, within moments of leaving the immediate vicinity lethargy begins to steal over him like a shroud.

He struggles through it, concentrating upon the forgotten pleasure of verbal sparring – though with the mortals it is not really sparring. He is like a tiger they have caged while never realising it stays from amusement rather than forced obligation. And when he rakes a lazy paw across the glass they do not see the runes he carves into melted sand; they hear only the screech and wince of claws until it stops and they can pretend again they have won. Because they cannot read his words. And they will never understand his divine soul.

But the further he moves from the man-beast’s alchemic chambers the less he can remember, the less he can understand. When he’d sat there with fingers upon belly and drumming a war-beat upon the table he’d felt sharp vicious glee at the very idea Thor would ever think to orchestrate such a cruel undertaking just to steal the child of his flesh.

 _Let him try_ , he had thought then. _Let him try, and then let him_ die _for it_.

Now it is trickling fear he feels, and already it rises towards a raging current. In the chamber he had spoken of drowning the world. Loki thinks now he is the first one being dragged under, pulled down by the maelstrom twisting above his aching head.

It is not something Thor would think of on his own. Thor is not above subterfuge, but he is not inclined to it. How many times has he disdained Loki’s games? Even when they have proven their worth Thor has weighed the victory more heavily upon the might of warriors. No, Thor would not do such a thing.

But his mortals might.

The tightness in his chest becomes crushing. Though Loki calls these creatures his brother’s pets, but he knows he has been afraid from the very beginning that it is the reverse, that Thor is their mascot and their thrall, willing and wilful as he marches to the beat of their drum.

“You are the Prince of Asgard,” he whispers. “You are worth so much more than this.”

As is the child of his heart – but for now, there is no heart for him to find. Bowing his head, Loki feels all strength leech from him. Only with great effort can he return to his chamber. Only there does he feel somewhat safe, curled into a nest of cushions. He’d built such structures in dark corners of the palace libraries when he’d been a child himself: each a kind of fear-fort where no-one could ever find him, drag him out to fight with swords and steel when he preferred sorcery and seiðr.

Still he slumbers only uneasily. Then, when the hands come upon him, he jerks – then digs nails deep and dangerous, feeling flesh and warm blood. There’s a smothered groan as the arm is yanked loose – and only one person in this place could do that, and Loki knows him even before he looks up to see those damned blue eyes peering into his violated haven.

“Brother,” he says, and even with his forearms track-marked and trembling, Thor’s concern is for him alone. “Brother, why are you crying?”

“Because I am of no use to my child.” And now Loki weeps. He does not want to, he wants to raise in himself the careful spiked barbs of word and thought that he had pushed beneath the skin of the man-beast, but instead he weeps and he is _afraid_. “Because I cannot save my child.”

Awkward in size and in sentiment, Thor comes to his knees, makes a gallant if misguided attempt to wedge himself into the small space. “You don’t have to do this alone,” he says, grave. “I am here, brother. I am always here. I always have been.”

“You are a liar and a fool, Odinson.”

The break in his voice matches the misery in his. “Then that makes two of us,” he murmurs, and when he extends a hand across the space between them it holds a nervous twitch. “Please come out, Loki.”

“How am I to trust you?”

“I don’t know.” Now they both stare at that hand, outstretched and empty yet. Loki is not crying, but his eyes burn with every word Thor says. “Did you ever trust me?”

The answer is quick and true, a single shot aimed straight at the heart. “Yes.”

And Thor grimaces; it has hit him harder than Loki had ever imagined. “I know I have no right to ask you to do so now,” and each word is stilted and strange, “but I do wish you would.”

Loki has no answer for that. Thor himself doesn’t even try, just winds his fingers tight when Loki places his hand in his palm and pulls him free. After, they simply walk in silence. Staircases and corridors wind about them like the paths of Yggdrasil, dark and twisted in the twilight of rapidly-approaching Ragnarök. Then, there is light through an opened door and they are upon one of the balconies. The city before and below them both teems with noise and life; Loki shivers, even though the cool air ought to be a balm against his overheated skin. But then his body ought to react to many things in different ways than it has recently, and his words are as dull as his mind.

“Have you spoken to the man-beast today?”

Turning slightly from his view, hands both tightly wrapped about the iron balustrade, Thor furrows his brow. “No, why?”

“I believe I…” This time when he licks his lips, they taste of saltwater and shallow regret. “…I might have upset him.”

“Yes, you can do that.” The faint amusement in that digs in behind his eyes like shards of glass, and Loki closes them tight even as Thor goes on. “It doesn’t matter, Loki. He understands. Everything that has happened…it is done. This is not. So, we will help you.”

“ _Why_?” His own hands ache where he holds on so tight, and now he glares even as his voice falters in counterpoint. “You swore to protect my child from the Allfather. But what about the _true_ father?”

Those wide lips tighten, but Thor relaxes his hands. “I would never allow harm to come to this child, Loki.”

“But by keeping me here, you _are_ harming it.” Looking down again, to ragged nails and bleeding cuticles, Loki wonders when he’d started chewing upon his own fingers like a prisoner starved. “I need my seiðr, Thor. This child exists because of it, and with it so subdued…”

And his brother swallows hard. “Banner believes the child to be healthy.”

“Banner is a mortal,” he retaliates, swift and bitter when his mind is roused with that which might save his blood. “You would trust a mortal who knows nothing of me with the child of your own blood?”

The great body stiffens, and his eyes speak louder truths than his actual voice – in fact, when he does speak, it is only one word and that barely voiced. “ _Loki_.”

The tears he had wept only moments before claw at his eyes again, raking thin rivulets of burning salt upon their vulnerable soft jelly. “Oh, I _see_. You don’t even like to speak of it, do you? Don’t even want to say it aloud.” And yes, Loki is aware that Thor’s mortal friends do not know, is just as certain they would never choose to understand, but it _hurts_. And so he smiles, teeth white and straight beneath the ravenous curve of his lips. “Tell me then, brother, does the truth burn your ears? Or is it perhaps because this time it is not a lie from these lips that you can disregard like so much useless noise?”

He looks away. “I never expected this to happen.”

“The Norns are often cruel in their work.” Loki gives his laughter over to the rising wind, voice high-pitched and children. “Help help, I’ve fallen down the well. Come save me, brother, I’ve fallen into the well of the worlds and I can’t get up!”

“ _What_?”

The wave of tiredness washes away the strength of sarcasm that had straightened his spine; slumping forward again, Loki shakes his head. “You should not have allowed me to watch mortal media as much as you have,” he mutters.

“It’s not truly a matter of allowing you to do anything.” Any amusement in that is wearied and strange, grows only all the more so when he shifts closer, almost alarmingly close to his side. “You don’t have to stay here, Loki. But I hope and I wish that you will.”

“Until…what? Until the child is born and the Allfather comes to claim it? Until I change my ways or you change yours, and together we remake the world in fire and in blood, and then live on in song and legend sung in halls from here to Valhalla?”

“Until it ends.” And it seems his hand has moved without thought, for Thor barely seems aware of the way his fingers are now tight about the crease of his elbow, his side pressed tight against his as those earnest eyes seek deep within him. “I am with you always, Loki. Until it ends.”

And there is an ending there, Loki thinks, one already written and one he fears he may never know how to read. “Thor,” he says, tired and aching, “you are, without a doubt, the worst brother I could ever have.” Those damned callused hands tighten again, and his aching head falls, eyes closing, leaving only darkness and the strong warmth of muscle. “But still…I have you.”

“Yes.” Thor’s voice is half-strangled. “Yes, you do.”

“And really, you are _all_ I have now.”

This time Thor says nothing, though his arm curves about his waist. Loki leans into the unbending column of his brother’s body and sighs. Beyond this barrier there is a great chasm of light and concrete and the spaces in between into which he could cast himself. But he opens his eyes and looks up instead of down.

It is a sea of unfamiliar stars, and somehow though his eyes are dry now he can still taste the scent of salt upon the air. There are constellations there that he cannot read. A moment later he retreats again into darkness and gives himself over to the sensation of his brother’s warmth. Tonight, he thinks dully, he might be able to sleep without a bedtime story.

And before he does, he realises he hasn’t needed one of those since he was a child himself.


	7. This Broken Jaw Of Our Lost Kingdoms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note -- there's a tag in this that says "cracked drama," and this is where it starts to become obvious. Because some _weird_ stuff is going on around the tower now. And that's not counting the drugged-up not-pregnant Norse god they've got stashed in there.
> 
> That's just what _started_ it.

Loki’s lucidity comes and goes like the moon, waxing and waning in its rounded white orb. Yet his abdomen never swells to mirror its sweet curve, and with the passing of another week and no further word from Rogers and Stark, Thor recalls their conversation with a sinking heart. _How long?_ Loki had asked. _Until it ends_ , he had said.

Sometimes it’s not that he wants the end. Sometimes it’s that when he has his brother’s weary head in his lap, fingers tangled in the dark hair that is scented with lavender and valerian, he hopes that this never will.

But then he sees Loki’s empty eyes as his empty fingers look for something to occupy them, something that is not that near-perpetual cradling of his belly. Loki can amuse himself, of course. He has _always_ been able to amuse himself, being a creature suited to solitude. But sometimes he is lost. Sometimes Thor must guide him. And yet he is stumbling in the dark just as much as his younger brother is.

“You could…spin, perhaps?” he had said one desperate afternoon. “Like mother?”

Loki had looked at him as if mad. Yet within the next day he had spun yards and yards of coarse wool into fine thread. Coulson had taken one look at the room that seemed more spidernest than bedchamber and promptly announced if this didn’t warrant a payrise and better mental health coverage, then he didn’t want to know what would.

But then Thor found the man teaching Loki how to knit tiny shoes with the yarn he had spun and even now he wonders if this is what going mad feels like.

Two days later when Thor goes to the kitchen, intending to rummage until he locates his curiously diminishing stash of Pop-Tarts, he is startled to find someone lurking in the dead silence. Turning to the table elicits no verbal reaction, and he frowns. “Is…something wrong, my friend?”

The dubious expression Barton wears is more suited to a child seated before a plate of asparagus than a grown man before a dish of dessert. “…well, things have been _more_ wrong. I guess.”

“Do you not wish to eat your sweet, perhaps?”

The archer seems to have picked up on his somewhat hopeful note, given the way he arches an eyebrow in such a manner that it seems to scream: _you have no idea what you’re risking_. “I’m not allowed to eat it yet. Apparently he was worried I might burn my mouth.”

“ _He_?” Thor takes the seat across the table, pokes the plate with one finger. “Did Loki make this?”

If possible, he becomes even more dubious than before. “Yes.”

But he makes no protest when Thor twists the plate, examines it from all angles. Loki’s culinary adventures in the mansion’s kitchen have been of some concern to all; matters had not improved after Thor had pointed out that to the best of his knowledge, Loki has far more knowledge of Asgardian poisons and potions than Midgardian food and beverages. No-one has dropped dead yet, but then Thor is the only person who has really subjected himself to this element of Loki’s nesting instinct – and most people agree that Thor could eat a refrigerator of expired perishables and still fit in another box of Pop-Tarts before dinner.

“He said it was too hot?” Thor says finally, sitting back to cross his arms over his chest. Barton’s own hands are well out of sight below the table and he does not blink as he gives one flat word in answer.

“Yes.”

He has all the demeanour of a child about to be sent to bed without dinner, and Thor has to frown. “Forgive me, I am not familiar with all elements of the creation of Midgardian dessert, but…was that even cooked in the first place?”

“No.”

“I…see.”

From the look on Barton’s face he doesn’t think that Thor sees at all; a moment later, words burst out of him like exploding popcorn. “Oh, come on – I mean, I know your brother’s crazy even _without_ the fertility regime gone fucked all to hell, but this is just _weird_. And that’s including the doll thing from the other day, too.”

Again Thor reaches over, briefly presses a finger into the half-hard substance resting in upon a base of pressed fine crumbs. He’s not touching the doll thing with a ten foot pole, either. That had rattled even him. “What did he say it _was_ , exactly?”

“Key lime pie.”

“Aren’t…limes green?”

“Yes.”

They both stare at the starkly fluorescent pinkness of pie before them. Barton’s despair is eclipsed only by Thor’s complete bemusement.

“I wonder what is actually in it,” he says finally. “Surely it couldn’t be _that_ bad. Loki is very clever with his alchemy. He always has been.”

Barton stares at him like he’s grown two additional heads, but Thor is saved from the sharpened arrowhead of his tongue by the click of the door. Barton’s already wincing as Thor turns to find Loki, another dish in hand, outlined by the doorframe. He blinks at them both with that terrible half-confused look he sports when his medication has been titrated up again in the interests of preventing imminent nuclear winter. Then, his lips curve upward in clear delight.

“Oh, Thor, I didn’t know you were coming!” He keeps his step as light as his voice as he comes to the table. “Here, do have mine. I can always get another piece.”

After setting the plate before him, Loki takes his place at Thor’s side, balances his chin on his hands, and beams in a way that might have made Thor’s heart break if not for the frank fear on Barton’s face.

Still, he does cheer up when he nods at Thor’s plate. “Brothers first,” he says. “And I’m sure it’s going to be _delicious_. Just…don’t burn your mouth, yeah?” And for the first time Thor feels concern about this particular mission when Barton adds with magnanimous cheer: “I’ll even wait ‘til you’re done. Go on, big guy – eat up!”

 

*****

 

There’s an odd twist to his stomach when Thor eventually excuses himself from the kitchen, citing another engagement. It’s hard to say if it’s guilt or the pie, though Loki had seemed content enough with Thor’s noble effort at devouring the entire over-sized thing. In fact Loki is cheerfully working his way through yet another box of Pop-Tarts with no signs of slowing when Thor closes the door behind him.

Thor still feels a reflexive twinge at the idea of sharing his favoured Midgardian delight, but even after Barton’s frankly alarming attempts at teaching Loki how to use the toaster – Thor is certain no manufacturer of such treats or mechanical thralls had ever expected a bow and arrow to be used in their prescribed mating ritual – he had accepted it.

Still, that initial reluctance had devolved rapidly enough into first fascination and then concern. Loki has never been a big eater; his idea of a hearty meal would barely make up the first of Volstagg’s appetisers. Yet he had been steadily working through the second box when he’d looked up to catch Thor staring at him.

“I have cravings, when I am expecting,” he had said, defensive and defiant even though Thor had caught a flare of sudden fear behind those too-wide eyes. He’d flinched, looked down at the table and his fifth slice of the distressingly-pink pie.

“I’d…not noticed.”

“I didn’t make a song and dance about it,” he’d said, and Barton had been wincing for reasons Thor almost didn’t wish to know about when Loki added: “I don’t…really have them now, actually.” His fingers were covered with frosting and sprinkles as he began to shred the one he held. “But…I am hungry.”

Thor had left for the meeting with Fury shortly afterward. Barton remains in Loki’s company, despite the oddity of the pie situation that had apparently brought him there in the first place – although he hadn’t been made to eat any of the pie in the end, which Thor suspects explains a lot.

Thor does not knock, simply steps into the office; he is expected, and sees no reason to pretend otherwise. The broad-shouldered man waits near a bank of monitors at the far end of the small chamber. When Thor steps to his side it reveals several angles of Loki and Barton still in the kitchen, apparently now constructing card-houses out of Pop-Tarts.

“So he’s back to the baking,” Fury observes, flat and factual, and Thor gives a half-shrug.

“Would you like to try some?”

“I’m going to have to go with no.” Yet the man does cross his arms, raising an eyebrow. “Although I hear Coulson’s fond of chocolate cupcakes.”

“I could ask him if he’d oblige.”

“You could,” he replies, and Thor is just noting how unenthused he sounds – though the man has never sounded enthusiastic for any reason in his memory – when he adds with whipcrack command: “Is this normal for him?”

“No.”

And Thor’s answer, just as rapid and sharp, turns the corners of his lips sharply down. “I don’t like any of this, I think you know.” Turning away from the monitors – Loki and Barton seem to have discovered Twinkies – Fury leans his hip back against the large desk and trains his one eye upon him. Thor is uncomfortably reminded of his father, though he is stunned out of any such remembrance by his next words. “I was not entirely behind this plan from the beginning.”

“Then who authorised it?”

“Those above me.” Only the way his hand raises to rub three fingertips in a fine circle about his temple belies at all the man’s unease. Otherwise, he is as stone. “To be quite frank, I never thought it would get this far.”

“Then why did even you allow it?”

“I thought any additional information we could gather on him would prove useful.” Thor is beginning to bristle at both the man’s casual attitude and the mercenary mindset behind it, but he cannot actually argue his logic. Still, it burns. He lets it smoulder while the man goes blithely on. “There is also the issue of what we’re going to do when he realises he’s _not_ with child. Because from all the reports I’ve read, when he’s not trying to become a domestic goddess rather than a batshit demigod, he seems to have a fairly good idea that something is wrong. He also said some things to Banner that frankly make me want to wall him up down in the basement. As in, the basement we have down in Antarctica.”

And his hands curl into fists, even as his gaze and words might be. “I wish I had never allowed this.”

“Then why did you?” To his credit, Fury sounds genuinely curious even in his command. “Because without you, we never _could_ have done anything as bugfuck insane as all this.”

“I…did not lie. When I said…” He feels Fury’s single eye upon him like the thousand-fold memory of too-boisterous childhood adventures that had ended in reprimands and retribution, and it only makes it all the harder to form his troubled thoughts into words. “…when he has been with child in the past, it has genuinely made him happy. I did not lie about that.”

“But not this time?”

And Thor would shrug, if not for the guilt holding his shoulders slumped and down. “Nobody realised how deeply his seiðr is tied to his awareness and charge over his pregnant state.”

His snort oddly reminds Thor of Sleipnir, of the way his father’s warhorse would paw at the ground in the moments before battle as if to say _hurry up please it’s time_. “Considering that to all intents and purposes he’s _male_ you’d have thought someone would have picked up on as much, but then I suppose we’ve all seen weirder.” Then he shakes his head, filing it under _Done_ and moving on. “Look, the way I see this? You’ll have to take him back to Asgard. We have no way of containing him here – and from some of the things Banner’s been saying, Loki’s going to take this about as well as the Hindenburg did that last little spark up on the passenger deck.”

Thor considers this for a long moment, turning the words over in his mind. Then, he gives it up as another one of those little Midgardian curiosities they sometimes flash before him like cheap costume jewellery. “I…I am afraid I did not understand the reference.”

“It was bad. _Oh, the humanity_ , and everything.” Tapping one finger against the soft leather, his speculative look deepens. “And even you must realise that even _if_ Loki lets humanity at large off the hook, at the very least he’s going to blame all of _us_ for this, considering how invested we’ve become in the phantom baby’s wellbeing.”

“It could look like an accident,” he says, because to his knowledge that had been the plan. It doesn’t seem possible, but Fury’s sceptical look goes down further than even the deepest sea trench.

“Because your brother would trust us with news of an accident.” Thor cannot disagree with this, though it only seems to worsen when Fury says something else in a carefully idle fashion.

“I’m still concerned about the father angle too.”

His shoulders stiffen, and though he caught the motion before it became truly obvious, Thor knows Fury is not a man to miss much. “In what manner?”

“We all know Loki’s going to flip his shit as soon as he realises the baby is dead – or that it really just never existed. But how’s the _daddy_ going to take it?”

Certainly Thor’s brother has always been the better liar, but he himself knows how to dissemble when he wishes it. This is however far beyond his meagre talents, and he must look away from that dark all-knowing eye. “The father need not be any of your concern.”

“He need be, if he’s going to stomp in here asking pointed questions about the kind of healthcare his baby’s mommy got while taking a sojourn with SHIELD,” Fury says, voice taking on a familiar warning rumble Thor is all too personally familiar with. “Particularly if he happens to be carrying one of your brother’s many pointy sticks at the same time.”

“That won’t happen.”

“Level with me.” Thor is not a person accustomed to taking command, at least not easily. Yet there is much they owe each other, both in debt and in honesty, and with great difficulty he turns back to the mortal clad in his black leather. The man nods, though his eye never leaves his.

“Does he know?”

Thor swallows back bitter gall. “He knows.”

“Does he just not care?”

There’s a leading quality to his question, disbelieving and almost disgusted, that Thor wishes he could react to. Already his fingers twitch for Mjölnir, silver sparking just beneath the surface of his skin, but he keeps his face still. “I cannot say any more than I already have.”

“But you can promise me Daddy’s not coming home any time soon?”

Again, the scepticism burns. It is not distrust, Thor knows that – and the Norns know reasons for trust are in short supply in this den of lies these days. _No wonder Loki is feeling more at home here by the hour_ , he thinks with raw bleeding bitterness. Then, he smiles at Fury like he just doesn’t care even though his heart is torn asunder. “Believe me, he understands his place in this matter.”

At first Fury just turns this over in his mind, silent as he continues to watch Thor. Then, he appears to just let it go. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Loki’s romantic relationships are just as screwed up as any other relationship he’s ever had,” he mutters, though he pushes up from the desk and returns to look at the monitors. When Thor follows his single-focusing gaze, he notices the kitchen is now a tumbled mess of sponge and pastry with neither Loki nor Barton in sight. “By the way, I think we should pull the plug on the baking.”

“Why would you say such a thing?”

“I have no idea what he said to Barton to make him sit in the kitchen on his own that long, but it was weird as hell to watch it. Hell, if Loki had outright threatened him I doubt Barton would’ve thought twice about taking him down for the count – but I _am_ starting to think Loki’s screwing with him.”

A shudder explodes down his spine before he can withhold it. “Loki isn’t well enough to play his games.”

“Can you be so sure?”

There is the answer he wants to give. Then, there is the truth. “No.”

“No.” But there is no satisfaction in him now when he repeats the word, flicking through several cameras. When the pictures settle, Barton and Loki are nearing Banner’s lab. Knowing the time, Thor feels his stomach churn unhappily. It’s just another continuation of the madness, and as if reading his mind, as if reminding him of why they do these things, Fury says: “Stark and Rogers are in touch. They shouldn’t be much longer.”

And Thor knows it ought to make him happy. This entire farce had been initiated in order to give the Man of Iron and his Captain a clear run at an operation they did not need Loki meddling in. It has already been three weeks with no clear end date, of course, but it would have taken far longer had Loki been at his operational best – or far less, considering he might have blown everything to Hel within the day had he become involved in the matter.

“And then you wish me to take him back to Asgard?” he says finally, hoarsely, and Fury nods.

“I’d have said take him back at the very beginning, if not for the fact that at least this way we know exactly where he is and what he’s doing.” Then, for the first time in the conversation, Fury asks a question that does not already seem to have the answer he expects imbedded into its very intonation. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Thor might have laughed at the naïveté of it all, if he were not so very tired. “They are not generally happy to see him, no.” _And so shall be even less pleased to see him in such a state, even should I tell them he had not sought to create the phantom child himself._ “But they will not execute him on sight, if that is what concerns you.”

“It doesn’t, though I accept it does you.” Something strangely close to hope creeps just underneath the more usual blunt tone. “Surely a trip back to the farm will level him out some? Maybe you can even work out some way to _keep_ him there this time.”

The branches of Yggdrasil are long and winding and reach into all corners between and within the Nine. It is no surprise that Loki slips every net they catch his quicksilver form in. It will be the same, Thor knows – although perhaps this time, it will be worse.

Perhaps Loki will tell all of how the so-called child had come to be.

And he closes his eyes, his shame and his sorrow hot and heavy beneath his breast – and made all the worse for the longing and lust that dog the heels of both. But even for the pleasure of it, he cannot ignore the simple truth: between Heimdall and his own place of Seeing when seated high upon Hliðskjálf, Odin Allfather likely already knows what has befallen his sons upon this distant realm.

 

_“You started this. You wanted this.” The accusation hung heavy between them, almost as heavy as Loki’s weight upon his hips – but not nearly as heavy as the crush of awakened guilt upon Thor’s twisting turning heart._

_And Loki shoved at him, right above said heart, the heel of his hand pushing up hard against its uneven beat. “Speak to me! How dare you ignore me, **you** who have brought me to this place, **you** who—”_

_“Stop, Loki.”_

_Strangely, he did. But it was not much better, that silence; within its stretched confines Loki leaned back, leather-clad rear dragging with gleeful purpose of motion across his brother’s half-roused crotch. Thor grimaced, hands curling into fists upon the scorched ground beneath their tangled panting bodies. Mjölnir did not leap to his hand, but then he had not called her. Such a scene was not worthy of her presence. He himself was not worthy of her power, not like this. Not ever like this._

_“It is wrong,” he said, finally. The words were weak upon the air, barely a crackle when they should have been a brilliant charge to light up the realms and beyond. It was no wonder Loki laughed, no wonder he leaned down to press lips and teeth against his throat, clever tongue curving serpentine runes of pleasure and pain upon his skin and the blood coursing beneath it._

_“Everything about us has been wrong from the very beginning,” he whispered, and though Thor did not remember him biting the taste of star-iron burned the back of his throat. “So what does it matter now, so close to the end?”_

_It mattered. It always mattered. That was why it had all started. That was how this had happened that first time – because he had just wanted to show Loki that he mattered. He had wanted to show Loki that he was_ loved.

_One hand curved low and Thor gasped, arched upward into his waiting lips. “Just fuck me you fool,” Loki said, rough and low and dark._

_At first, he did not. He would not. He had changed his mind._

_Then Loki started laughing again. And then – and then, Thor did._

 

He can still hear him laughing now, he thinks, for all he’d tried to silence that pealing laughter with teeth and bite and thrust and tongue. “How much longer?” Thor asks, those memories beating dull and hollow against the curvature of his aching brain. Fury’s single watchful eye is all the weight of this world and his responsibilities to it when he finally answers.

“A week, maybe two.” After letting it sink in, he shrugs. “Banner thinks Loki will last. What about you?”

When Thor looks up, he knows his torment is writ across his face like the darkest of poetic tragedies sung in low chorus across the banquet tables of a home far in both reach and in right. “I know not what Banner does, neither by alchemy nor as an apothecary. I can offer you no succour on so specific a front.”

“No, I meant _you_. Will _you_ last?”

Under other circumstances, such implication might have stung Thor into standing up straight, into curling his fingers about the unseen Mjölnir’s handle. _Speak not to me of my limits, mortal; I am of Asgard, and you know not my power_.

But now, Thor lowers his eyes and his voice, intones the words with heavy purpose. “I know my duty.”

_…and I know it as well as I do this indelible stain upon my honour._


	8. Behaving As The Wind Behaves (No Nearer)

Most of his brother’s ridiculous comrades are not within Loki’s sight nor reach. When asked Thor says that they have their work and then will give no more, for which Loki decides he cannot blame him. Remembered malice lurks somewhere low in his mind like the slumbering weight of an uneasy leviathan; satiated and silent though it might be now, he supposes it is not impossible that his brother might believe that it could be summoned to the surface again, brought forth by the siren call of those days of old.

But it is older days than those he dwells upon now, days _far_ older than mortals can ken. Loki can understand that _they_ would not understand. But surely his brother does. Surely Thor knows he is too tired, too heartsick with worry for the child of his heart, the child of his body, to risk one precious life in the ending of others before his child’s has yet even begun.

And then he remembers where he is.

And then he realises his brother already knows.

Loki walks the mansion’s corridors as if they are those of the palace of his mind, and finds them both the same: strange, dark, empty of voice and direction. Featureless and blank, they are lined with closed doors that bear the promise of more beyond – but every one is locked against him. It should not be this way. To be in such a state frightens him, and wearies him too. And yet he cannot feel the anger he knows the situation so rightly deserves. He should rage against it, seiðr flickering from fingertips to spark across the vast fractal plains of his ever-expanding soul and mind until it consumes everything that ever was, ever is, ever will be.

But it is dark and he is alone and he has forgotten how mortals turn their little luminescent thralls on and off and he can feel his brother’s nearness but he cannot focus on it and he is _alone_. And for reasons he only vaguely understands some part of him decides to recall how helpless Sleipnir had been in his earliest moments of life. The fresh-birthed foal of his changed body had been both unnatural and ungainly upon eight legs, trying to stand and mimic his mother only to fall. The first time, the great dark eyes had been so filled with shock and pain and confusion and as he remembers there is here and now a strange sound upon the air. A moment later Loki feels the tightening of his chest, the whistle of air through his lips, and realises the keening comes from deep inside his own strange and stranger body. His hand rests upon his abdomen as it so often does, and his heart is broken sorrow – for the son he had known, for the babe he still does not know, for himself and all that he knew and has since lost.

And still he is alone.

Slumped in the hallway, he does not even remembering stopping, let alone back-sliding to the thickly carpeted floor. There’s a voice from somewhere above, smooth-accented and patient, but something in his hollow mind whispers that he will find no comfort, no warmth in such a companion should he acknowledge its presence and seek its counsel.

Loki curls in upon himself, fingers twitching. _It is only doing what it is told_ , he thinks wearily, and knows it to be true even as he fears he now knows so very little else.

He looks up only when another voice, heavier of accent and living in tone, comes from far closer to where he lurks in the shadow.

“Loki?”

And although Loki half-stirs he cannot rise; his head will not even co-operate long enough to look upwards. The voice sighs, but does not come any closer nor any lower.

“Look, JARVIS said you were down here on your own, that you wouldn’t answer him when he asked if you were all right.”

It is the archer, Loki thinks with dull recognition. Immediately his mind tries to make its swift evaluation of purpose and personality, of weakness and strength, of use and expendability – but even though he knows him from before in this now there is nothing. At this moment Loki can barely recall the once-contents of his own mind.

“Loki?” There’s an uncomfortable shift of weight from one foot to another, discomfort rising as Loki’s tremor only grows stronger. “Look, I can get your brother for you, but he’s asleep and he’s…not been doing much of that lately, and—”

His head jerks upward. “Is my brother unwell?”

The snapping green fire of his eyes has very nearly surprised him; the widening of the archer’s own eyes is enough to tell Loki how uncommon that is. “No, just…tired, I guess. Like you? Or not _exactly_ like you, but…” It should be hilarious, how the man cannot load and loose his words as easily as his bow and arrow. When he pauses he is without weapon and yet Loki does not see it as an opening. He simply stares upward in silence while the mortal rubs his head until his hair stands up like porcupine spines. “Aw, hell – look, were you trying to go somewhere specific, or were you just…out for a stroll or something?”

“I woke up. I felt…alone.”

“Ah.” This makes him unhappy, Loki can see, although he cannot see _why_. Again comes that upswell of frustration, though he is too wearied in mind and body and heart and soul to maintain such volatile emotion for long.

“And it’s not good for the baby,” he whispers as he sags once more, not quite having intended to speak as much aloud. Even in the almost-darkness of the twisted corridor Loki can see the archer’s eyes widen just a little further than before.

Then, he sighs. But the narrowing of his eyes suggests that perhaps this time he plans to take whatever shot he can manage with whatever he can find to aim.

“Do you want company then? I’m not off to bed or anything. I’m just going to watch some shit on one of Stark’s billion-inch plasma screens or whatever the hell they’re made of these days.”

Loki’s brow furrows. Something in him knows what the mortal means, but so much of his understanding of Midgard seems to have vanished with the complications of his pregnancy. “… _shit_?”

“Can’t expect anything better from the FOX network – and trust me, even a god of mischief ain’t gonna make them stump up the goods. Come on.”

In one of the smaller media rooms they end up watching something else entirely, which Loki gathers is called _Mythbusters_. He’d thought perhaps it would be something about the ridiculous legends mortals are so attached to when it comes to making sense of those divine beings that live beyond their ken – he’s read enough of their idea of the Greek pantheon to laugh himself sick on no less than seven separate occasions, and he’s saving the Mayan gods for a particularly rainy day – but it proves to be far more mundane mortal matters mixed in with what is nonetheless mayhem enough to keep his eyes upon the screen.

The archer had mused his doubts aloud at first about its suitability, but then had apparently decided it couldn’t be any worse than the Shark Week marathon he’d caught him and Thor at the week before. The remote had clunked to the floor and judgement had been passed.

Loki’s attention is wandering now; it rarely stays on one thing for long, hence his directionless meandering about the tower, particularly when he does not have Thor to steady him. The yearning he feels for his brother then is sudden, almost catastrophic. He tightens his arms about his knees, miserable and half-huddled in the armchair he had installed himself in. Loki often feels the urge to curl into his abdomen, a spira mirabilis curving about its most precious centre, as if such an action might hold everything in.

He’s never quite sure it will help. Certainly his brother and the man who would be beast assure him that the pregnancy is as stable as can be expected, given the circumstances. Yet he feels empty, restless – like it is too late, like all the little holes that have been poked into his soul over endless years have finally let everything he ever held dear come pouring out.

The archer is also alone upon one of the great couches, sprawled and indolent. Except for the fact that he is not.

Loki was raised amongst warriors, and he knows the lay of their bodies and their minds. Even at rest, they are soldiers born and trained – for they are never truly at rest. And so he knows even while one hand hangs low and his booted feet rest upon the upholstery in direct contravention of the specific orders of the grey-suited man and his concealed weapon, even though the blue eyes are washed out pale white noise with the reflections of the television screen dancing within, the archer watches. The archer waits.

In Asgard, it would not have made the slightest difference to his confidence. Those warriors might have regarded his seiðr as effeminate, as weak, but he had always known enough of his own strength to realise that they knew nothing at all. Loki knew his power, then, and revelled in it enough to take what he wanted whenever he wanted it.

But he is nervous now, his fingers fluttering like loosed moths blindly seeking a light to immolate themselves within. Even in this, even as those fingers move over the still-flat planes of his abdomen, his seiðr does not come to him as it used to. In that he finds there is no gentle reminder of what lies within – and in short, he is afraid.

But still he stands, still he walks. Driven by an instinct he does not wish to understand, Loki _moves_ – and already he is wondering if this is how it is for his brother, if this truly is how he lives: moment still for moment, measure still for measure.

And perhaps that is why the archer calls him like a lodestone, the ever-inviting fall of a singularity’s cradling event horizon. His is a life lived between heartbeats.

And Loki wants another heartbeat. He cannot feel the second deep inside him, and so his stuttering heart calls desperately for another, even if it should prove utterly false by the fact it can only always ever be temporary and transient.

The archer has sensed his approach, but he still shows clear shock when he swings his feet down while Loki takes a stiff seat at his side.

“Uh…hi,” he ventures, suspicious and poised like a wild animal on the cusp of the decision of fight or flight. Loki, himself in much the same position, gives a grave nod of his head.

“Hello.” And without further thought Loki turns slightly, angles his aching empty lonely body, and lets himself fall. The man stiffens beneath his sudden unexpected weight, but does not draw away. There is not really much he can do, outside of simply flinging him to the floor, and it seems whatever passes for honour in their mortal brotherhood will not allow for such treatment of their “guest.”

In the face of that pause Loki abandons words as they have abandoned him. Reaching back he takes the archer’s hands, callused and reluctant, and wraps them about his middle.

“ _What­_ —”

“Please.” It hangs between them like a pane of glass not yet fitted to its frame, twisting and delicate upon its thin hoisting wires. “Please, I don’t wish to wake my brother, and…”

“And, I’ll do?”

“ _Please_.”

It is so weak. He loathes himself. The still sensible, the still logically sensate part of his self screams itself hoarse to see silvertongue and liesmith brought so very low.

But then, the fingers over his belly speak louder still. Their movement is somehow uncertain, perhaps as uncertain as his own belief as to what truly lies within. Yet even in this state, Loki can do nothing to harm the child. He cannot even believe in the babe, not truly, and he hates himself for that more than he could ever hate himself for seeking comfort in the strong arms of a man who is nothing more than a mortal pawn in the endless cycle of war he and his brother are trapped within.

Sometimes, Loki forgets what even started that war. And then he fears that if it has no start, then there can be no ending, that the snake will simply devours its own tail and crush its body all about the world and that in the end everything has happened this way simply because it was what the Norns believed would amuse them most.

He is shivering again. Barton sighs, arms first tight and then loose again about his body and all its shapes and secrets. But they are still around him and there is warmth in this false and borrowed reality. “Fine. _Whatever_.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He sighs again, everything in the set of both mind and body whispering that the mortal fears for his sanity. “Just…promise me there’s no more pie after this, yeah?”

He should promise, Loki knows. Something else falls from his lips entirely, like a rotten reject from the bough of a tree that should have borne one of Iðunn’s golden apples. “Do you hate me?”

Barton is long silent. Then, he sighs. “I should.”

“Then why do you allow this?”

Again, Barton takes his time, selecting the shaft, the fletch, the arrowhead of his reply before he first nocks and then looses its quiet arrow. “Because the sins of the fathers shouldn’t be visited upon their children.”

Then he says no more, his bow set aside. But it is enough. Loki closes his eyes, feels the rhythm of a doubled beat, and sleeps.

 

*****

 

The haze of days is all he has and yet he remembers so very little of what each brings. One day melts clumsily into the next and Loki half-drowns in their fog and mist. There is little that can anchor him, orient him – and in the end he must take all that he can get.

Though he has generally had disdain for what passes as culture upon this dull little backwater planet, he has been feeling deeply unwell over the last three days. Therefore Loki finds it is somehow easy to lay his head upon a soft surface, body stretched upon a sofa of reasonable comfort, and hold the little black box of control in his hand. He’d known of such devices before now, though had found even the concept of the system mostly useless. But since Barton had taken the time to introduce him to the frankly baffling collection of discs in the floor to ceiling cupboards, now he watches.

It is disinteresting, most of it, and he often falls asleep only to be wakened hours later by the repetitive burble of menus and holding screens. Some things hold his attention more than others; he thinks Barton is most alarmed by his fondness for _Ghostbusters_ , particularly after he had made an idle remark about not realising how effective gelatine-based destroyer vessels could be against downtown Manhattan. “I might have skipped the army, had I known,” had been his innocent words, and then he had spent the rest of the afternoon feeling distinctly lonely after Barton had made a pointed exit and never come back.

He is alone tonight. Thor has been attending to other matters, and though Barton has spent a surprising amount of time in his company, the archer has been gone all day too. This is just Loki and the constant low-grade murmur of the television, a kaleidoscope of lights flickering across his skin in the false darkness.

This time he does not fall into uneasy half-dreaming slumber to its accompaniment. Instead he turns it off and pushes to his feet. A brief bout of vertigo cripples him, has him grasping for the inanimate support of the couch. In truth he has felt very ill today. An unopened box of Thor’s favoured Pop-Tarts slithers to the floor and he stares in vague comprehension of what it implies. He hasn’t been hungry today. He doesn’t think he’s felt much of _anything_ today, aside from a constant low-grade ache in bone and in heart.

He misses his seiðr. It has been a part of him for so long that its loss is like having a layer of skin and flesh stripped away, leaving the exposed nerves raw and burning. Nausea roils in his gut as he looks away from Thor’s treats, closing his eyes in the hope it might steady him somewhat. His fingers tighten the more the dizziness grows. He misses Barton’s steady still presence.

Then Loki actually manages to pause for a moment long enough to realise how ridiculous that is. Then, he mourns that he is alone. A creeping hand moves over his belly in soft plea and he sighs. No. Not entirely alone, perhaps. But without his seiðr, there is only hollow comfort to be taken from this the tomb of his unknown child.

At least he has sense enough to take him back to his rooms, he thinks vaguely, though the smooth-accented voice of Stark’s mechanical thrall does guide his steps once or twice when it suspects he is veering off-course. Pushing open his door, he is both gladdened and disturbed by the relief he feels to be there. His step proves both drunken and uncertain as he winds and wends through the mess of pillows and bedding to the connected room.

Usually Loki does not care to admit it, but he has long missed his bathchambers on Asgard. There is simply nothing like them in Midgard. Though he suspects there are far finer chambers available than these he has been given – and some of these likely even in this very tower, given the vulgar and expensive tastes of the Man of Iron – it is probably about as well as he can do here. The chamber is not large enough, not open enough, and the windows do not open onto balconies onto the city onto the vast kaleidoscopic skies of Asgard that darken and bloom into starlight survey at the horizon. But the tub is enough for two and the water is warm and he can float beneath the surface with eyes closed and all limbs submerged.

Thor must have asked for this, he thinks. Surely they would not have given it to one like himself otherwise.

The assortment of odd unguents and liniments and salves remains much of a mystery to him. He’d discovered a ball of compressed powder that had proved effervescent in action and in scent upon contact with water, and that had amused him almost as much as the rather experiment with the peculiarly coloured linctus. Somehow Loki will always treasure the _look_ on Thor’s face when he had come into Loki’s chambers to find an avalanche of rainbow-limned bubbles spilling from the bathchamber into the room beyond, Loki amongst it like a mermaid wreathed in sea-spray.

He attempts to pours a little into the tumbling water now. It doesn’t work, for even though he knows a bit more its limits his hand doesn’t seem to want to obey. Then he decides he doesn’t care. A great rising of bubbles is already erupting from the roiling surface, but he disrobes and walks willingly into soapy embrace. The sting ought to hurt his eyes, but he doesn’t close them. He keeps them open as he sinks beneath so that he might stare up through the rippled ever-changing surface. Water and surfactants fill eyes and ears and mouth and nose and somehow he just forgets to care.

That damned voice disturbs his peace, muffled by the cradling false-womb of water though it might be. And that seems perverse, that it can see him even in this place. Unfair, too. All had known on Asgard of Heimdall’s constant gaze, but that had been a part of his godhood, a part of the very order of the universe. Here, the Man of Iron’s thrall has no right to watch his recoil from reality.

Eventually he must rise again. He ignores the continued query of the voice; he has another concern now. The water is too hot. He doesn’t remember it being so hot. Shouldn’t it cool? But then he is hot. Is it him? Loki closes his eyes. He clenches his hands. There’s a brief memory somewhere in all this muddled confusion, of the blue and of the chill found in both unwelcome touch and unwanted revelation. And he shoves it hard, pushes until it flows out of him and into the water. And _then_ there is cold, and _then_ there is relief, and the Norns-damned voice is talking again and all he wants it to do is _shut up and leave him alone_.

“Loki?” A different voice comes to him in the sharper wake of a knock. Because the other voice cannot knock, because the thrall has no hands. “Loki, if you do not answer, then I have no choice but to enter uninvited!”

He says nothing.

The door opens, brings with it a welcome rush of cool air. Loki doesn’t look to its source. His aching body will not allow for it. Not even the gasp of his guest and the companion will allow for it.

“I thought you said he didn’t have any magic!”

“This isn’t his seiðr.” Thor’s voice is heavy with sorrow. “This is his heritage.”

And Loki sighs, the hand beneath the cracking ice somehow still warm upon his belly as he thinks of the child within. Half-Aesir, half-Jötunn – born of princes both. They are both now sheathed in ice even as his pale-skinned body burns. God of fire, god of ice, and all the mischief is gone because he thinks he’s actually forgotten how to laugh.

The other half of the whole inside Loki is beside him now, leaning upon the side of the great tub. There’s the crack of ice beneath his knees as Loki rolls his head to look at him: his beloved brother with rainbows broken beneath his familiar bulk. And behind his shoulders stands the archer, rolling with wary incredulity a frozen bubble between his calloused fingers like the enchanted orb of a goblin king.

“Loki?”

Summoned, Loki looks back to his brother with a slow and thoughtless blink. “Thor.”

“I…perhaps I should take you to Dr. Banner. So he can examine you once more. You…you seem poorly today, brother.”

“I don’t want to go.” He wants to close his eyes again but he’s too tired to even try. “Don’t make me go, _I don’t want to go_.”

Thor’s own weariness is a miasma about his slumped form, and he shakes his head. “As you wish. Though…please, at least get out of that cold water.”

Loki does not understand why he feels any shyness. Thor has seen him naked, and not just in the sense of exposed skin. But he cannot rise from the waters with his brother hangdog at his side, a jumbled knot of guilt Loki cannot untangle, does not even have the strength to cleave in two. Not that he has any blade to hand.

“Get out.”

Thor’s eyes widen. “What?”

“I can dress myself. Get _out_!”

Barton’s long since gone when Thor eventually does the same. He should feel guilt, Loki thinks. But he barely feels anything. Numb, frozen, he is little more than a frost giant in a pale pretty mask. As the ice and water sluices free of his skin he catches sight of his reflection, grimaces at what he barely recognises as his own self. Then, something else catches his attention and he looks harder.

Within the depths of the mirror he twists to the side, observes the flat stomach beneath his trembling hands. It has been two and a half turns of the moon since he and his brother had coupled. Of course it might not have been then that the seed took hold, but that is what bothers him: he has always felt the conception. This one…he had not. It seems a ghost-child that he carries, unannounced in arrival and now silent stillness within his womb.

But then his memories are fractured things. He might go to sleep at night with his thoughts all ordered upon their shelves and wake in the morning to find half fallen upon the floor, scattered and shining; the rest are a quarter disordered chaos, the remainder simply _gone_.

And he does strange things. This bath is the least of it. He is particularly disturbed by the raggedy doll that sits upon a small throne of cushions and blankets in his room, especially given he can stop to stare at it and then find hours have slipped away in seconds. Thor doesn’t like it. In the last week alone he has offered to take it away on at least seven distinct occasions. Loki wishes he would. But he can’t allow it. In some ways, it is just as alive as the child in his belly.

Apparently, he’d once made Barton take tea with him and the doll. While Loki ought to feel gratified for the mortals doing as they are told, this bothers him somehow – that the archer would humour him so, that the archer would sit with a doll and its master sipping from empty cups and eating from empty plates while being regaled with tales of a world he will never ever know because the truth is Loki himself can’t remember what he’d said. He can’t remember it at all.

Dressed in a robe now, Loki enters the crowded chambers with its soft edges and gentle underfoot. Neither the archer nor his brother are present, but from the low back and forth beyond the ajar door he knows they are not far. It doesn’t seem to matter, not with the doll right there. And he is staring again. It stares right back into the void of his heart with its black button eyes. And his arms ache: right in the creases of the elbows, right where they bend, where they _would_ bend to cradle the child of his flesh. The child he fears will never be born.

The laughing red slash of mouth grows wider and Loki frowns. It is a doll, not a true thrall. Just Midgardian child’s play. It cannot smile. It cannot speak. And yet he hears it laugh and the empty eyes widen and Loki is on _fire_ even though he feels he is made of _ice_ and the doll is laughing laughing _we’re all mad here_ and Loki can not does not will not—

He doubles over in agony. His hands press to the explosion of pain and fear deep in his abdomen and then he is on his knees and falling forward and he cannot catch himself because he cannot let go and he just manages to angle himself so his shoulder jars against the floor rather than his face and then he is curled about himself his middle just one bright burning ball of throbbing collapsing anguish and pain.

“Thor.” He barely can recognise his own voice, a mewling cry to distant heavens, far too weak to be heard. With a low groan he pushes his elbows out, tries to push himself up. He might be able to crawl like this – no, he _must_. Because his child needs him. Because he needs his brother. The door is open, why can he not hear him when he calls? “ _Thor_ ,” he croaks, again, and there is no answer. How like him, he thinks with sudden hysteria that he cannot voice aloud for his throat is tight and tied with the tortured torment of his hot-cold body and the dying star at his centre that his rapidly dismembering self orbits about in drunken swirls and _yes_ how like his stupid lumbering noble honourable _fool_ of his brother to respect his privacy at the worst possible moment.

Then sudden fear floods through him. Is it what he wanted? Loki trembles, tender muscles twisted into screaming taut misery. Had Thor wanted this to happen, the loss of the child he could not possibly want, the child of his vaunted holy Aesir blood tainted by that of the abandoned Jötunn runt left out in the cold and the dark to die alone?

“ _Brother, I need you!_ ”

Panic tears his throat wide open and Loki is _bleeding_ , screams spilling out of him in arterial spurts and then _he_ is there and then _his_ arms are around him and Loki cannot stop his voice it is become an entity separate from him a banshee’s disembodied soul swirling in the air around them as Thor holds him close and beneath his cheek Loki can feel the pound of his heart as he gives over to the wind and _runs_ every footstep a crack of thunder and lightning dancing upon his skin and flashing in his eyes as he bears his brother across the threshold and into the place of pain and hope and the startled man-beast-doctor who might be his only hope.

Still, as Thor tries to lay him upon the table and Loki digs his nails in deep desperate anchorage, he cannot help but fear that his child’s hourglass has not run dry, but that perhaps there had never been any grains of sand and time and life within the cracked and broken glass to begin with.


	9. At The Hour When We Are Trembling With Tenderness

This is not the kind of battle Thor knows how to fight. Those he knows are the ones where he can charge in with Mjölnir to hand, berserker bloodlust roused and raging, each war-cry torn from his throat and carolled across the sky in clear clarion call. In such battles, the thunder of his heartbeat threatens to bring all the realms to their knees like the death-knell of a thousand iron bells.

But he has run as far as he can now, and in this chamber of stark white walls and shining soulless metal thralls the star-souled Mjölnir can do nothing. Even could Thor bear to call her to his hand, she can offer neither Thor nor his brother any aid. The Allfather had spoken of how such a hammer can both break and make entire worlds anew, but as Thor looks now at the broken thing cobbled together from what shards remained of the shattered Loki of before, he thinks bleakly that he is something that might never be fixed again.

Perhaps because this is a chamber of healing, a place where hurts are supposed to be held close to hearts until they are mended, Thor thinks suddenly of his mother. Yet there is no comfort in the thought of those blue-bright eyes and the honey-glow of her curling hair, or in the memory of the way her skirts whisper as she crosses a room with the grace and dignity of a queen eternal. No, should she see them as they are now…how her head would bow, slim shoulders tensing while long white hands would be held tight and taut upon her lap.

_Oh, my sons. My precious sons._ And then one hand would move over heart, the other over womb. _What terrible pass have we come to in these the darkest days before the twilight of the gods?_

Loki’s hand tightens about his as the mortals buzz about in looping patterns between patient and mechanised thralls. Thor looks up, finds terror in those green eyes the moment his words knife straight into his heart.

“I need my seiðr.”

“Loki, you are too weak.” His own voice is weakness itself, denying his brother the one thing he most wants, the one thing he must not have.

“Give it to me!” Rising hysteria sharpens his breathy words into a scream that is like nails upon cracked glass. “ _It is the only way_!”

“Banner will help you,” he says, desperate, and Loki’s head thrashes back and forth in swift denial.

“He can’t! Only I can help me! Only I can fix this!”

“No, Loki.” And Loki’s grip is so tight it feels as if it will crush even his hand. “No, let us help you. You don’t have to do this alone.”

“My child.” Still now, Loki stares right through him. His entire body is a tensed bow with no arrow to nock, trembling like a dying animal within the maws of a snapped hunter’s trap. “My child cannot die without a name. My child cannot die, I have not even known him.”

“You will know him,” he says, and the agony of it leaves him hollowed out and empty even as the lies keep coming. “Loki, I swear to you, you will.”

The too-wide eyes roll to his, perfect reflection of the suffering in every straining breath. Perspiration beads across his brow, yet he is as cold as ice. There is even the vague sense of the Jötunn carvings beneath his false glamoured skin, and – and then, he remembers. The runes, protective and protecting.

Thor is no jóðmóðir, no birthing-mother, and he knows little of true seiðr whether worked in healing or in war. But he knows something. He might even just know enough. Careful, he pulls forward the hand he holds and turns it upwards, to the sky, whilst Banner continues to work with the two assistants over the tools of their Midgardian magic.

With the words of Asgard upon his lips, Thor works what little sorcery he knows – and Loki’s eyes rest upon him as he carves three runes upon the trembling cradle of his brother’s palm.

_Father._

_Mother._

_Child._

“That’s not how it works,” Loki says, half-hoarse and just audible through the chattering of his teeth. Thor closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, steels himself – then, and only then, can he meet his brother’s eyes.

“I thought seiðr was at least half-belief.” His fingers still rest within the well of his brother’s hand. “There is ritual, there is ceremony, but then there is nothing without faith.”

Then he curves the last character upon Loki’s ice-cold Aesir skin.

_Love_ _._

“Oh, Thor, you great fool.” Loki clearly wants to laugh but he is crying instead, and Banner is murmuring to him but he’s not listening as he stares at his brother and whispers: “It’s all faith in the end, isn’t it?”

And now he’s going under, fluttering eyes echoing the briefest of struggles before he surrenders and falls into sudden still serenity. Thor doesn’t know if it was the runes, his belief, or just the Midgardian alchemy now coursing free and true through his veins via the slender rods of silver and iron now driven deep into his clammy flesh, but Loki has calmed.

It should make him feel better, he thinks. There should be some comfort in knowing Loki has escaped his torment. But he hasn’t, not really – and though Thor knows there is no child to lose, he feels like Loki has already lost something far less tangible, and far more damning to his already lost and wandering soul.

“What happened to him?” he asks, weary in body and in spirit as he turns, raises his eyes to the doctor. Banner blinks from both behind monitor and glasses. A moment later, he grimaces.

“I…a medication dosage issue. I think.”

“You _think_?”

Though Banner generally is the one whose lowered voice and growled words prelude a catastrophic slide into fury, he winces, inches slightly to one side. “Thor, this isn’t an exact science.”

“I know what he has done, but we have no right to make him suffer so!”

“I know that.” And there is the flare of the mortal’s own anger – but this is the man and not the beast, the coiled frustration of vocation and basic human decency. “Do you really think this is what I trained for?” he demands, and his hands are curved about the vials in his hands and the dark eyes are wild dark storm. “Do you even _know_ what the first tenet of a physician’s calling is?”

In the face of his low ferocity all Thor can do is stare.

“ _Do no harm_.” In disgust he drops one of the vials, the liquid within bleeding from within the shattered glass that had once held it prisoner. “There are a lot of reasons why I chose to stay away from SHIELD in the beginning. Fear, frustration, fury.” Raising the second vial to a better light, he flicks it viciously to shift an errant air bubble. “But that was it. I never wanted to hurt anyone. Not even someone who might just deserve it.”

Though there is only silence between them, Thor’s mind reverberates with the oldest lesson of the warrior, learned when the wooden practice blade had first been pressed into the soft waiting palm of a child barely breeched.

_Think not of what you kill_ , says that voice of long ago, gruff and aged by both years and memory, _think not of what you kill, but what you allow to live_.

And such words are a bitter mockery of the trick he has played upon his brother the so-called liesmith. “He doesn’t deserve this.”

Banner says nothing, turning back to the silent patient before him. The tense lines of frustration in his hunched body scream quite loud enough, and Thor cannot look upon him for long. Instead he looks to his own empty hands, remembering the invisible unholding runes he had carved upon Loki’s palm. Father. Mother. Child. _Love_. In those he remembers the gold-soaked corridors of Asgard’s sprawling palace. For so many years it had echoed with the laughter of two children, two brothers, two halves of the same soul born across realms but always destined to meet in one.

Again he thinks of his mother, alone in her morning-room with her spinning-wheel stilled, blue eyes distant and sorrowful upon the sky that is but the beginning of the vast ever-increasing space between a mother and her sons.

“This has to stop.”

“Yes.” The doctor’s words are bitter gall even as his hands are gentle balm. “Yes. It does.”

Thor departs soon after. This is not a battle he knows how to fight – and in his culpability and his uselessness, there is nothing he can do but leave his brother to his drug-induced tranquillity and pray that when Loki wakes, the nightmares will not still cling like poisoned burrs to his skin and his mind and his heart.

 

*****

 

Later, Thor watches the dawn birth and expand in agonising slow strokes up and across the horizon from the roof. He supposes he cannot be surprised when someone joins him. It’s possibly more of a surprise that he hadn’t encountered the man already; he has always been most comfortable up high in his makeshift eyries where his sharp eyes might watch all that passes below.

Then he _is_ genuinely surprised when Barton hands him something small and green and soft. “Have you seen this?”

He has not, but even as he does now the small thing, all wool and long twisting tentacles spilling out from beneath black bead eyes, makes no sense whatsoever. “What is it?”

“Oh, he knitted me Cthulhu.”

“I…what?”

Barton appears to be swinging between amusement and apprehension. “He’s kind of sort of not really a local dude.” Thor is by now _staring_ at him, and he gives a small shrug to match the half-curve of his lips. “Actually, I’m hoping that it’s just that Loki found Bruce’s stash of Lovecraft stories and not that he’s, you know, actually _met_ the squidface.”

Given his brother’s penchant for seeking out the company of the peculiar and the preternatural, Thor can offer Barton no comfort on that front. Instead he turns the little toy over in his hands, lips pursed. To his somewhat unpractised eye it at least does not look familiar. “It is well-wrought.”

“Your brother is a god of hidden talents, obviously.” Crossing his arms, Barton looks out to the middle-distance and frowns. “About the closest I get to that is karaoke night. I always win on karaoke night.”

That’s another one of those references that always slips past him, though Thor chooses to just give the wool creature back to the archer. “It…was kind of him, to make you such a thing.”

“I keep thinking it’s like a cat, actually.”

“It does not much look to me like a cat.”

“No, the way cats bring their owners dead birds and mice and things.” Stowing it with surprising care in one of the interior pockets of his jacket, he looks up at Thor from beneath a raised eyebrow. “Is it a gift? Or is it a warning?”

For all the situation has been fraught with dangers both real and imagined from the very outset, somehow this stings him deep. “You do not trust him?” he asks, perhaps a tad too sharp. “After the state we have put him in?”

“That’s _exactly_ why I don’t trust him.” And again he looks off into the distance, the gesture almost reflexive. “How is he?”

There are many things in the past between Loki and all of the Avengers, and this present cannot make up for any of that even though the worst of it now is of their own creation. Yet Thor hears genuine concern in the archer’s words, and cannot help but feel gratitude. “Banner says I may see him in the morning.”

“Let me guess, you’ve been down there ten times already?”

“Fourteen.” Rubbing at his head, he gives him a wry grin. “He keeps telling me that he does not care if this hour is truly considered morning, I must wait until the sun rises and Loki has had more rest.”

Barton’s amusement fades a little. “Do they actually know what happened to him?” His fingers, usually so controlled, are tapping a quick staccato upon his knee. “Like, was it just the medication being out of whack, or something?”

“I believe so.”

His hand stills. “We really have to stop this.”

“We do.”

It’s clear that Barton wishes he had a bow to hand, one hand arching up with restless energy to rake fingers through his hair. Thor can sympathise; his palm aches for the familiar weight of Mjölnir, but he dare not call her now. “Christ, I can’t even remember why we started it, most of the time,” Barton finally mutters, fingers now all but spasming in and out. “But then…”

Much earlier in the evening, perhaps an hour after Loki’s collapse, Thor had engaged in a brief but intense conversation with Fury. They’d spoken of Stark and Rogers and how they still toiled at their mission. It was in a delicate balance, the man had argued, their trajectory about to intersect with the one Lady Natasha rode upon. It could not be stopped, not now. And Thor swallows hard.

“When this began, I thought it would be worth it.”

Barton’s even-voiced scepticism almost reminds him – painfully – of Loki’s. “ _Really_?”

“Not just for the benefit to the realm in the destruction of their target. I was…selfish.”

“Aren’t we all, buddy?”

The pragmatism of the mortal is but one of the reasons why Thor has always found his company, when given, to be soothing. “It is not a luxury we should allow ourselves.”

“We’re only human.” One of those restless hands moves over the slight bulge of his hidden pocket where rests a crocheted Eldritch abomination, and he shrugs. “…well. You know what I mean.”

Thor isn’t entirely sure he does, but he supposes he understands the sentiment. That is likely where his next words are born from, he thinks with an unvoiced sigh.

“This is the most time we have spent together since…since my confirmation ceremony went as badly as it did.”

Barton’s watchful eye is all his answer; Thor is not sure how much he knows – how much any of them know. He’s never been inclined to details. But Barton does not ask for them. He just watches, and he waits.

“Admittedly it is a bit different now,” Thor says with half-hearted humour, and Barton almost chuckles.

“No dolls?” At Thor’s answering silence, his expression congeals. “…please tell me he didn’t have the dolls before.”

“Not like the one you tea-partied with, no,” he says, and he has to shudder; to this very moment he does not know why Loki will not let him get rid of the dreadful thing. He doesn’t even know where he found it. “He did construct thralls of light and imagined flesh, yes, but not little raggedy things with wool for hair and buttons for eyes.”

“Thank god for small miracles.” Barton’s removed the little octopus-faced squid creature from his pocket at some point because it’s in his hands again, and then he shakes his head and says nothing more. Thor looks to the horizon. He doesn’t think the sun is anywhere near high enough for Banner to finally allow him to see his brother. He still has the urge to try.

“There is no honour in this.” Rubbing a hand across his burning eyes, Thor seeks blindly for words. “It is not a battle I can fight with sword, steel, or star-iron….no. There is no honour in such trickery.”

“Hey. You’re talking to the king of trick-shots here, big guy.” The tiny Cthulhu is dancing on his knee now, beady eyes ever-watchful. “The long-range lone ranger, yeah?”

In some ways Barton’s empathy for Loki makes no sense, especially given their fraught past dealings. Yet it others, it does, and Thor must shake his head in protest at Barton’s words. “What you do takes great skill.”

“You’re saying that what Loki does doesn’t?” The green wool construct ceases its prancing, and Barton’s expression looks like creeping chaos. “….God, I can’t believe I’m defending him. God, I can’t believe _he knitted me a pocket-sized Cthulhu_.” Stuffing it back into said pocket again, he gives Thor a despairing think. “I think I’m going to have to tell him I don’t want a shoggoth. Because a little crocheted shoggoth would be one step too fucking far.”

“There is no honour in trickery,” Thor says instead, futile as it might be. And Barton digs the heels of both hands into his eyes and grimaces.

“But there can be victory.” When he looks up, his eyes are pale pools that reflect the answer he already knows to the question he is about to speak. “Isn’t that what they say? The ends justify the means?”

“But what about the ends for Loki?” Thor looks down, sees his fingers are digging deep into the iron railing again. “He will either hate us for not saving the child, or for creating the illusion of a child that had never even existed.”

“Or he winds up hating _himself_ for losing the only child he thought he might be able to keep.”

Thor stiffens.

“You’re right, you know. There’s no honour in this sort of trick.” Barton’s hand is light upon his shoulder, and unerring as it is upon his drawn-back bow even as he pulls back, turns away. “And I’ve had enough pyrrhic victories to know how it feels when you end up wanting to throw yourself on the pyre, too.”

 

*****

 

“How fare you, brother?”

Loki, interred amongst the colourful tumble of blankets he has used to make his bed into a nest, rolls his eyes towards Thor as he steps hesitantly into the room. He doesn’t reply immediately, just beckons him closer with one long finger. Closing the door tightly at his back, Thor crosses the floor to take the chair at his bedside.

At least Loki does look better. Banner had assured Thor that the pseudo-miscarriage had been a bad reaction to a fresh configuration of his medication regimen – and that they wouldn’t be trying anything of the sort again. From the thin line of his mouth, he’d also been speaking to Fury about ending this, and had been no more pleased by the man’s reply than Thor himself.

“Do you remember when we spent six turns of the moon in Svartálfaheimr?”

Grateful that he at last speaks, Thor looks up. Still, he cannot help his confusion. “Yes, I do.”

“When we returned, Sleipnir was so overjoyed to see my return that he tried to embrace me, do you remember that?”

He blinks, and against all odds a faint smile encourages the corners of his lips upward. “Oh, yes, I remember that.”

“Well, I _also_ remember that you said _oh, isn’t that endearing, he thinks he’s people!_ ” Crossing his arms over his chest, Loki scowls. “All while I lay half-suffocated beneath him.”

And Thor is laughing, even as he presses one curled hand against his mouth as if to hold it in. “I picked him up off you!”

“When you stopped _laughing_ , yes.”

He sobers quickly, voice low. “Is that how you feel now? That I am laughing at you?”

“No, I feel as if I’ve been enthusiastically set upon by an eight-legged warhorse.” His own amusement is a vague and uneasy thing, wrapped about him like a half-torn veil. “But I will recover, I am sure.”

He really does look better, Thor notes – and certainly the pain is gone from his eyes, though they are still haunted. He’d thought to find him drugged; this lucidity, for all its weariness, is deeply welcome. But the sorrow in his eyes deepens, sudden and strange with his next words.

“How does Sleipnir fare? It has been…some time, since last I saw him.”

At first Thor has no answer, though he tries. He opens his mouth and nothing comes out. When Loki turns his face away, then it comes. “He misses you.”

One hand rests again upon his abdomen, that reflexive repetitive motion that half-hypnotises, half-repulses Thor, and he swallows hard. Loki’s own answer is quiet in his question.

“You are certain that my child will live?”

“Would I lie to you?”

The bitterness of this true lie is spoken through a forced smile, but Loki is not looking at anything but his own hand upon his ghost-child. “I still can’t feel it move.”

“You…” Blundering again, Thor tightens his own fingers tight and feels the vague hint of brontide beyond Loki’s window. “The…baby can’t be very old. Surely it cannot quicken so very young.”

“I don’t mean the quickening.” Leaning back against his bolster of more pillows than Thor can count he raises his other hand, lets it fall. “I’ve told you before, usually I can feel it. _Always_ I can feel it. Always I _know_.”

“So you have said.”

The smile turns cracked and bleeding. “So I have said,” he repeats, and behind it sing-songs _and since when does anyone believe what Loki Liesmith tells them, yes?_

Thor flounders, half-drowned and searching for dry land he knows he does not deserve. “It is not that I do not believe you, brother, but…this situation…”

“I cannot be _trusted_. I understand.”

In that awkward silence Loki closes his eyes, as if seeking sleep. Long fingers still rest in a curled cradling lattice over his abdomen and for a long moment Thor cannot look away. He does not even want to. Only with words can he break his own prison, seeking distraction from this deep reminder of the depth of the wrong he has done his brother.

“I have something for you.”

Loki’s eyes do not even twitch. “Oh?”

“If you are hungry.”

And Loki is forced to pay attention when Thor clumsily presses said gift into his hands. Opening his eyes he begins to frown as he turns the little carton over in his hands, almost smiling through his despair. “Oh, _Thor_.”

“You should eat. You need to regain your strength.”

When Loki looks up, the shadow of days long past and since lost has become the brightness of reality, echoing in the brilliance of his smile. “Yes, of course.”

And of course he does not. Instead Loki just shreds first one, then two, then three Pop-Tarts between his long, too-thin fingers. At first Thor just watches. Then, he cannot bear it. Reaching over to catch them, he holds those questing hands still. Interrupted in his vague thoughts, Loki looks up, and Thor grimaces at the growing vagueness he finds in his too-bright eyes.

“You should eat.”

He shakes his head, as if dispelling an oncoming daze. “I’m not hungry.”

“You ate so much before.”

“I felt empty.” There is a little pile of ruined sweetbread in his lap, and he frowns down at it as if he’s forgotten what it is. “I thought it might fill me.”

Thor closes his eyes. It does nothing to slow the impact of a tsunami of agony. “You can blame it on me.”

“I rather think we’re both to blame.” He’s oddly pragmatic again, his slipping lucidity returning, but still Loki stares at his hands again only to find them all pastry flakes and frosting and sprinkles.

“If you did not want it, brother, you could have left them to me.”

“You would eat them had they fallen on the floor in the bathchambers, Thor. I hardly think the fact they’re crushed all over my fingers and in my lap is going to stop you if you in fact still wish to eat them.”

That startles him into looking up, finding an eyebrow raised in his direction. Even if there is truly an invitation in it, Thor still does not know if he ought to accept such a thing. Then Loki smiles, wide and easy like he had that morning of Thor’s ruined coronation. _Oh, it was just a little bit of fun_ , he’d said, and then Thor just leans forward, takes two long fingers into his mouth, and _sucks_.

Loki gasps, jerks free with eyes wide. And in Thor’s mouth, the sweetness of the Midgardian treat mixes with the gall of his own regret and remorse.

“I…I am sorry.”

“No. No, I…” A deep breath fills his lungs, slow and steady. When Loki releases it, he stares all the while, eyes large and watchful. Then, he moves forward and then his lips are on his and Thor feels the worlds collapse to leave them the only beings in existence at its lonely centre.

They have never kissed before. Not properly. Not in the fashion of lovers. There have been other kisses, more than he can count, and those to all other parts of their bodies. But there has never been this. Never like—

Loki tastes sweet, even though all he had had of the Pop-Tarts is what he took from Thor’s own lips. It’s a peculiar kind of homecoming, because despite the false and dominating too-sweet sugar of Midgard, beneath it somewhere Thor tastes something with more tart. Iðunn’s apples, perhaps, bearing golden promise of near-eternity in every mouthful.

Somehow that is what makes him draw back, reluctant as the motion is.

“We should not do this.”

“Why not?” Loki’s hand is on the space between shoulder and throat, and there is a faintest reminder of their previous intimacies in the way his fingers curl, in the way they warningly pull on the long hair they find. “Do you not wish your little mortal pets to know of your deviancy, your depravity?”

_They know already_ , he thinks. Not this, of course. Not really. But they do know of the deeper depths he has sunk to.

“It is none of their business,” he says, the sudden and sharp, and Loki nods.

“Very good.” Oddly sounds like one of their former tutors. But his hand upon his cheek is soft, knowing, only ever that of his beloved younger brother. “We are what we are, Thor.”

“And what are we?”

He is almost afraid of the answer. “Gods amongst mortals,” Loki tells him, gentle again, eyes searching. “Truly, in this place – we have only each other.”

“I’m not sure I have ever had you.”

“Fool.” It might be a chuckle, it might be the creeping tide of tears closing in upon the shore, but his voice is aquiver with emotion as he presses their foreheads together and just barely breathes: “ _You’ve always had me_.”

The softness of his lips is a welcome reprieve from the barbed weight of guilt ever upon his bent back. A hand creeps about his neck, pulls him close; after long moments lost in his kiss he must back away, he must give his brother one last exit lest he damn himself completely.

“You are in need of rest, brother. I would not tire you fur—”

“The good doctor-beast put me on bedrest.” His smile turns sly, devious promise in its flushed curve. “I have no little intention of leaving this bed in the immediate future.”

And as Loki moves back into the bed he rises too, a siren from the depths. Throughout his stay in the mansion Loki has been in mortal clothing, and in various states; though usually innocuous, Barton has done doubletakes enough (“I’m _sure_ that’s Tony’s AC/DC shirt! Where the _hell_ did he get that?”) to assure Thor that Loki’s not the type to blend in perfectly.

This particular nightshirt is designed for easy access, to allow a physician to examine his patient without undue delay. On his knees, Loki’s entire body moves in one sinuous curve as it comes off. He is bare beneath. Thor feels his breath choke and hold in his throat but Loki is already moving forward, kneeling on the bed as long fingers begin to work over the buttons of Thor’s flannel shirt.

Thor goes back and forth in dress, himself preferring Asgardian familiarity though he is more comfortable in his armour. It is just that he is only able to take so much of Stark commanding his house-thrall to announce Thor’s entry into random rooms with strange Midgardian music such as _Flash Gordon_ and _Princes of the Universe_.

But Stark is not here now and it is guilt that stops him from donning either his armour, or the more informal wear of Asgardian noble society. In the end he simply does not want to be reminded of home, not when he has to look upon what damage he has done to his only true link to that place in this realm.

But Loki is stripping even that away from him, leaving him naked and exposed. There’s no chill to his hands, but still Thor shivers when Loki’s hands rest upon his shoulders. They then slide down the rounds of his shoulders and pivot inwards, fingers brushing standing nipples before they meet at the level of his navel, where thumbs hook into the waistband of his jeans.

Thor looks up, his own hands rising to the fly. Still, he must pause. “Are you truly certain?”

“I never lie about anything important, Thor.” He’s barely audible when he leans forward, lips pressed like butterfly wings upon his own. “I never have.”

The long pale fingers rest at his waist as Thor stands, pushing the jeans down before stepping free. At the edge of Loki’s bed he’s unsure, even now; surely this is not a good idea, not in his condition. But Loki’s hands take his, those long cunning fingers, and he shivers at the roused memory of them closed about his member, pulling him deeper; behind it comes the twinned memory of those same fingers thrust up inside him while laughter had seeped like a loosed lahar into his ears to burn every thought of right and wrong until nothing was left but _Loki_.

And it is Loki before him again now, pulling him forward, pulling him down at his side. Though not a large bed, when Loki pushes away some of the many pillows he has accumulated the space becomes sufficient enough. Thor almost starts to wonder where they all came from, but then Loki is pulling him around, pushing him onto his back, pale thighs straddling golden hips.

“Brother, what—”

“Just do what I want.” And even with his grin there is in that too-thin face a flicker of uncertainty, of lurking fear. “Please?”

And Thor cannot say no, not with his brother naked before him. The sight catches his breath, holds it desperate hostage: he does not think he has ever seen his brother like this. Nude, yes – in passing and in the ordinary passage of an Asgardian upbringing. But every time they have coupled before, in the corners and cracks of their bitter Midgardian battles, there has never been time enough to bare more than what is strictly necessary. Perhaps there had not even been quite will, enough.

Because this is not what sex is supposed to be, between them. It has always been violent, feral, fuelled by hate and the heat of words they can say only with the fierce mating of bodies rather than minds. This is tender and slow, and deeply different. Loki’s hands splay across his chest as he leans forward, hair taking a slight curl as he hovers just above him.

“I am sorry,” Thor says, and Loki frowns.

“For what, specifically?”

“Everything.”

And he snorts, an eyebrow rising. “I did say _specifically_.”

But he cannot be specific. And then, the crazed thought enters his mind and anchors there; he cannot rid himself of it even as Loki tilts his head in half-annoyance. But the thought has taken root, already grows strong: there _could_ be a child. There really could. If he could give Loki what he thinks he already has, remaking the promise broken even before it had been given, then maybe…maybe…

“Forgive me,” he whispers, bowing his head. But Loki does not allow it, two fingers under his chin and pushing upward so that he must meet his wry gaze.

“Again, I’m going to require specifics,” he says, and almost immediately shakes his head. “But then – no. No, I don’t need them.” His arms wrap about his shoulders, and there is no shame or reluctance and Thor has to wonder what mischief Banner’s alchemy has wrought now when Loki says with simple honesty: “I just need _you_.”

Another kiss and then he leans back so that the crease of his buttocks rubs a teasing path against the hard heat of Thor’s already-aching member. There’s the urge to thrust up, to just force and thrust his way inside – but Loki actually holds the power here, the potential, the ability to control what goes on between them in this bed. And Thor cannot resent that. Not when he is the one who brought him here.

“This…will hurt you,” he says, slow and uncertain, and Loki actually rolls his eyes.

“Do give me some credit, brother.” And he reaches over, all elegance despite the obvious toll the last two months has taken upon his body. “There is oil upon the mantel, see?”

He turns the unguent jar to him, opened, and Thor takes a deep breath. Sweet-scented, with passionflower and the lightest undercurrent of daffodils. He swallows hard. “Why…”

Immediately he expects fury for the unspoken implication, but instead Loki’s brow furrows. “I use it for my…skin.” A hand dips low, dripping with moisture as it trails across his belly; droplets strike the heated skin of Thor’s own belly with pleasure and pain. “It comforts me, to rub it there.”

It is like being struck low in the stomach, and he clenches his eyes shut. He has fallen so low that he does not know how he will ever rise again. But then Loki’s hand is on him, strong and sure, raising him up, making him strong.

The hand moves away. Thor opens his eyes, and life-giving air escapes him in all a rush to see those long teasing fingers now disappearing deep inside Loki’s body, careful and careless in the same motion. His own hips buck up in a jerky remembrance as he half-chokes, and Loki smiles as he holds up one finger on his other hand.

“A moment more, brother.”

To his credit it is truly the barest of moments, though it feels a near-eternity before his fingers slip free and Loki presses palms upon his chest and angles his hips backward. Then, it comes: the careful slow slide into undeserved paradise. Immediately he just wants to buck upward, to sheathe himself completely in the heat and the crush of his brother’s body. _This is not a lie_ , he thinks, hazy and half-formed, _all the words might be, but this is not. I’ve learned to lie with words, but not like this. Never like this._

He holds back his strength with the realisation that whatever Loki may or may not be thinking, he is still poorly, and neither can realise their true power: not the elemental force of Thor’s gifts of godhood, nor the pure energy of Loki’s learned and whetted seiðr. The first time they’d fucked, up against an anonymous Manhattan alleyway wall with Loki’s legs around his waist and his teeth in Thor’s throat, the resultant storm had flooded out the subway systems for three days.

This mortal world had been not built for beings such as themselves. But beneath the slow-rising weight of his brother, Thor trembles now to think what Asgard would make of them, that golden kingdom soaked in mystery and magic. The two sons, the light and the dark, bound together as one flesh one heart one soul; demi-gods, the mortals named them. Are they in twain, then? Because two halves can be pressed together and made whole, if their jagged edges rub clean enough against one another to hold true.

And Loki does hold true for all his broken bleeding edges, a pale shining white gleam, long and slender as he arches above him: a bolt of lightning wrought in immortal flesh. But for all Thor is the god of storm and fury, this one is not under his control. Loki is never under his control. He is wild and transient and filled with power entirely and utterly his own.

On the cusp of his coming, time comes to a halt. It is as if the world has stopped turning; there is sorcery in that, perhaps, but it is not the failing of the dampening wards because like his Jötunn nature this is just _Loki_. It is merely the power he has always held over his brother.

He has slowed, fingertips deep brands on his skin as he watches him from his pedestal built upon the prone form Thor now offers up to him like a sacrifice. No seiðr sparks along his skin, flashes from his eyes. But there is still magic in him, pure sorcery in the way he twists his head to one side with a long trembling sigh, his hips rising and falling, fingers now curving into the sheets, hair curled with sweat and the long lines of his lashes dark against the pale skin of his cheeks.

“Brother…”

His head thrusts back and his whole body stiffens with the pleasure that thrums through him with all the impact of thunder. He is a bolt of lightning, indeed: and he fills Thor with the charged emotion of life and lust and _love_. Thor clenches his great hands about the narrow hips, holding him steady, holding him closes as his own back arches, pushing him even further aloft. Then he is spilling deep inside him, giving all of himself willingly and wilfully.

_Forgive me._

Afterwards they lie still, tangled together. Thankfully the damned doll has been buried in an avalanche of linens and pillows, because while he does not want its empty accusing button eyes upon him neither does Thor want to move. They are here enclosed within a soaring bubble of unreality, dizzingly high. But it will pop, he knows, leaving them to plummet to the ground far below.

Thor holds Loki’s hand tight. He will not let him fall alone. Not again.

“Do you remember,” Loki says, sudden and painfully soft, “do you remember, what I told you before your confirmation ceremony?”

It seems almost a ridiculous thing to ask. Thor remembers everything of that conversation – because he knew later, so very much too late, that it had been the last time they had been as they were, as they thought they always would be: the Odinsons, Princes of Asgard, eternal and Aesir. Many a night has passed unslept while he paced his balconies and turned over every word, every expression, every fading remnant of those gold-wrought moments he hadn’t treasured until they’d turned to dust and drained away through his grasping desperate fingers.

“I remember,” he says, hoarse and low, and Loki sighs.

“I said something to you then.”

“And I never forgot it, Loki.” His fingers trace the curve of one cheek, the skin too pale and stretched over the strength of bone beneath. But he shouldn’t be able to see that strength. He trembles, and Loki’s own hand rises.

“And you said something to me.” This time his voice breaks, his eyes wide and green and open, a Bifröst opened between hearts. “But I _was_ being sincere, Thor. I swear it.”

Thor allows no silence to fall – he just thrusts himself into that kaleidoscope passage between their minds and lets himself go. “I believe you.”

_If only you could believe me, brother. If only I did not lie when I say I keep you here for your own good, for the good of the child that does not exist._

Burying his lies beneath the veneer of noble concern Thor curves against his brother’s back, fingers low on his abdomen and his next words whispered into his hair: “I love you too.”

Then, in case of doubt, when Loki cranes his face around Thor silences all with another kiss. But the whispers of guilt at the back of his mind will never be quiet for long. The truth bends always under the weight of lies.

And Thor, for all he is the god of thunder, just does not know when this storm will break.


	10. As The Perpetual Star Multifoliate Rose

When he wakes he is alone. Yet he does not feel loss, or resentment. In fact there is gladness instead; while it might have been bearable enough in their chambers upon Asgard, this mortal-wrought bed would not have held two Aesir for long in mutual slumber. Loki already knows from long childhood association that Thor can take up what seems two times his own body length in the space of even the largest bed he might happen to fall into.

With a light grimace Loki carefully levers himself upward and blinks at his surroundings. Though he has shared his bed with Thor before, it has never been in such a fashion. He aches all over, both inside and out, and still does not know what to make of it. But his brother has been kind enough both clean and re-garb him; he picks at the shirt with some amusement, recognising it immediately as the one he had stripped from him some hours before. Thor’s motives had likely been driven primarily by the fact the beast-doctor might be by to check on Loki – but even if there had been simple courtesy there too, both actions had required a foresight Loki would not necessarily expect of his brother.

Then he realises he has fallen backwards, muscles too tired to hold him upright for long. Loki stares at the ceiling for a little while before expelling a sigh. He should get up. Then again it is not as if he has anything in particular to do, although he _has_ been knitting a ridiculous scarf after finding a pattern that the grey-suited man seemed enamoured of. He can’t really decide why he’s bothering, finally telling himself it’s just because he thinks the stoic man wearing eight feet of mismatched and brightly coloured wool over fifteen shades of grey would be worth the idiotic juxtaposition alone. Whatever the truth of the matter is, he must still admit he finds the act of knitting deeply soothing in its repetitive click and curl.

It also reminds him of their mother. She is one of the few things of Asgard he will readily confess to missing. In these dark days he has little to no patience or affection remaining in his dealings with the Allfather, but his mother…his brilliant golden shining mother…

Relaxing back into the nest of pillows Loki closes his eyes and thinks of her. The long honey-rich hair, curls both bound up and flowing free about the watchful blue eyes…and then the warmth of her smile, the caress of her words, the warmth on her hand upon his brow. Frigga is a goddess, and she is the mother of gods. And Loki remembers so clearly the last time he had seen her, when he had held her sweet strength in his arms with the ashes of Laufey burning bitter in his mouth.

Then Thor had made his homecoming. It had been a moment ruined, perhaps, but still he couldn’t regret it – then, or now. Even with Odin still deep in his sleep the family had been together for just that one last time. With a sigh, he pushes that aside; he just wants to think of the comfort he had found in her then. The acceptance. The thought that in one single shining precious moment he had been a good king, a strong warrior, the favoured son – all three states being that which he had never been meant to be, had never been raised to be, had never been born to be.

His hands move gentle upon his still-flat abdomen. They have told him that the child is well, and he feels better, but worry is never far. Sometimes he thinks that is why he is always so exhausted; the low grade anxiety for his child’s wellbeing almost never leaves him.

Still, as he considers it now there’s an odd kind of serenity. He’s half asleep, perhaps. Loki chuckles, just a little. Then, with the magic that is innate to his blood rather than the learned seiðr that augments and amplifies that which had been born to him, Loki whispers _hello, baby_.

In answer comes a flutter of butterfly wings deep within his belly.

And he stills.

Joy. Silent and ever-expanding, pure unfettered _joy_ moves through his blood and his spirit and his mind and his soul, the light of a birthed star bursting forth in bright brilliant burning life.

“Hello,” he says, aloud this time, wondering and eyes wide. “Hello, in there.”

Again, he feels it: just the faintest of replies. But it is strong. Oh, it is _strong_. Loki stares upward, unseeing with standing tears threatening to pour down his cheeks and drown them all. Oh, so very strong, just like its father.

 _And the mother, too_.

Of course it is too young for distinct thought – but when those words move through his head he is too glad, too giddy to know if they had been his own or the child’s. Seeking again, Loki frowns for the first time. There is something peculiar in this. The fluttering life he carries still feels so very young, for all its strength.

Now he bites his lip, staring upward. Perhaps that had been why he had fallen ill, taken so poorly; it had been the intensity of the quickening of the child’s mind and soul. It is unknown territory; he has never carried an Aesir half-breed. Is it any wonder his body should be confused, when it is Aesir by glamour only?

Again his hands move as he slips again into the deeper levels of hard thought. He’s almost dreaming, down here; oddly, the doll flickers across his hazy vision, and he frowns. Then he closes his eyes. He doesn’t need to look at the doll. Not now. Not ever again. Finally there is something more, something inside, something content.

Loki does not know for how long he drowses. A knock on the door rouses him, though it cannot be Thor. He wishes it was, but Thor would never knock. Still, he takes heart in it. This is his little secret. Just for now. Just for a little longer.

“Who is it?”

“Dr. Banner. May I come in?”

“Of course.”

There’s a slight tilt of suspicion to the set of his eyes as he begins his work. Loki cannot blame him for it. Though their conversations bear not always the fraughtness found in ticking time-bombs, often enough they remain hazardous orchards of mines. A peculiar creature, this one, with his constant low-grade anger like a holding pattern woven just beneath the surface of his skin; Loki thinks it is all that keeps the two disparate halves of his soul in this extraordinary equilibrium.

Yet it is always the kindness that surprises him. The mortal can be deeply gentle, when he is not in his giant form. Yes, he has often annoyed him, frustrated him, at times even frightened him. But now as the man comes to his bedside, Loki smiles. It is easy, wide, and completely without guile. Though Loki would lie until his tongue withered and fell free of his throat if it were necessary to protect this new life inside him, he would never lie about how happy he was to know his child at last.

“Thank you for what you did for me.”

The mortal doesn’t bother to hide his surprise at Loki’s words, though he does not pause in his deft perusal of the tiny thralls he uses to gather and assess his data. “I’m glad you’re all right,” he says as he adjusts both spectacles and stylus, and Loki smiles as he bears forth the feigned innocence of his next words.

“Yes, my daughter and I are well.”

The man stills. When he turns, it is the slow silent tilt of a world shifting from its very axis. “ _Daughter_?”

“It’s a girl.”

“Truly?”

“Oh, yes, I do truly think she is.” He shifts in easy bliss upon the bed, and lets himself laugh. “And she is beautiful.”

“I…” He swallows with difficulty, looks away. “I have something for you to drink.”

The elixir pressed into his hands is welcomed, because for once Loki is not concerned overly with what is within its thick milky depths. Though he does not take it, not right away. Instead he holds it between his hands and fixes his eyes upon the mortal.

“I am truly grateful.” The man’s eyebrows rise almost to the level of the ceiling, but still Loki smiles. “I know that we have had…differences of opinion in the past, but I am forever in your debt.”

He shifts, clearly uncomfortable. “Let’s…not do that. We don’t need that kind of thing between us – this is my _job_.”

“Your vocation,” Loki corrects, thoughtful and slow. “You are a healer and you are the seeker of knowledge, and you have aided me more than I can ever repay.”

“Yes, it’s my vocation. I would do it for anyone,” he replies as he leaps upon the word with gratitude, and still Loki shakes his head.

“Even me. And my child.” And he feels her life-spark flicker inside him again as she responds to the flare of his love; this time, his smile is for her alone. “I will tell her your name, and she shall remember it always. It shall be as if ingrained upon her heart, precious and indelible.”

“Uh. All right.” The mortal has trained his eyes upon the glass; something in them almost makes Loki think he wants to reach over, to take it back. To take _something_ back. But Loki is content. Loki doesn’t even think. He just smiles wider as he lifts the glass to his lips and drains it dry.

Then, when it is set aside, he says with easy cheer: “Please do not tell Thor.”

“What?”

“About my daughter.” The stylus stills over the screen, but still Loki goes on. “I will tell him myself, when I am ready.” One hand rises, thoughtful fingertips pressed to his lips where he can still taste his brother’s storm. “Perhaps when I have decided her name?”

In the silence the beast-doctor’s eyes flick sideways. The doll is motionless, soundless, and Loki cannot help but laugh as he waves a dismissive hand.

“Oh, do not worry about that. I never named her.” Settling back again, he gives a shrug. “She can go away now. But she never had a name, so it does not matter what happens to her now.”

The beast-doctor goes away soon after, too, but Loki is not alone. Fingers expand over his stomach in a cradling web, life held safe at its very centre, and he smiles.

He is never alone, now.

 

*****

 

The moon begins to swell again, and though Loki’s belly has not yet begun to echo its rising curve he can feel the shift of life deep within and therefore cannot mind. It will come, in the fullness of time. Thor is now his constant shadow, and Loki is the brilliance that casts him. He does not doubt the truth of this inversion. He simply knows it. He _feels_ it.

It has not been perfect, of course. There lies too much between them to make this new path easy to walk together; all is delicate and fragile, each step just another upon a stretched tightrope. In these strange days of lightly dancing about his brother, Loki in fact finds out that the archer can walk a tightrope with enviable grace and economy of motion. Without his seiðr it proves slightly more difficult for Loki, and Thor’s expression is priceless when one morning he finds them stringing bedsheets between couches so that he might learn all the same.

“You must be more careful, brother.”

“I know,” he says, pushing at his hands irritably as Thor lifts him down. They have not come together since the night Loki had felt the child first stir into full-fledged growth, the heavy seed now cracked with green shoots cheerfully moving through the same soil from which Yggdrasil has grown tall from since time immemorial. But there is touch, so much _touch_. Loki has never been inclined to physicalities but his skin has become living thing with a mind all its own; even as he pushes Thor away he wishes to pull him close again. He just yearns. He just _wants_.

“I would do nothing to harm my child,” he says, quiet. And upon Thor’s face there is a sudden spasm of pain. Loki doesn’t understand where it comes from, feels he ought to care about that. But he is too content as he raises his hand to place fingers upon his brother’s stubbled cheek, smiles softly.

“Brother.”

Thor sighs as his own hand rises, catches his fingers. A moment later he brings them to his lips, kisses them softly. His eyes are haunted by spirits Loki does not recognise, and he is frowning at their shapes and unheard sound when a startled gasp is smothered just behind them.

 Both turn, find the archer watching them with wide eyes. For a moment Loki wonders if it matters. But Thor’s hand remains tight about his, and he smiles, and then Loki distracts the mortal by cleverly fashioning his brother a new cape out of Anthony Stark’s very best drapes.

It says something, possibly, that even when the grey-suited man sees what they have done all he does is shrug and say: “…you know what? I’m going to allow this.”

Several more days pass, the moon waxing stronger as Loki feels his contentment grow more solid, bright and gleaming. He still watches movies, but generally only in company. Though he feels he floats halfway between his mind and the alien sky high above the Midgardian ground he had fallen to so long ago, he has started reading again. The tower holds a great library with many interesting books within. That had surprised him; Loki is half-convinced the Man of Iron is incapable of reading something not in binary or engineering equation, unless it has instead half-clad women sprawled across machines in pitiful pornography for those who like pistons and thrust and the electromagnetic attraction between disparate bodies.

There are many fascinating tomes on science. Instead he finds himself reading Midgardian novels more often than not. _The Once and Future King_ is today’s fascination; when he finds them together, Thor is clearly somewhat disturbed by the title. It’s clear he thinks he should read it before allowing Loki to go any further, but in the end Loki reads it to him.

He’s been contemplating how to go about this for days, turning over moments and their suitabilities in his mind. Yet it comes upon it now without thought, sudden and perfect. Loki halts in the midst of a sentence, bare feet shifting in his brother’s lap as he gives him a soft grin. “Perhaps we might name the child Morgana.”

“What?” In the face of Thor’s shock, Loki smiles wider, let him stumble ever onward. “It’s…a girl?”

“Yes.” His face is a kaleidoscope, an arching rainbow of brilliant blissful emotion; he can see it clearly reflected in his brother’s wide eyes. “Yes, I think so.”

And he allows his brother to consider this further, his face cycling between wonder and something very like grief. That sits ill with Loki, twists his abdomen into strange contortions even as he lays his hand, feels the answering flicker of a burning birthing light within.

“Do you not like it?” His smile is all but gone now. “Perhaps it is a pity the child is not a son. We might have named him Arthur, then. To my mind, it seems a…suitable enough name. The once and future king.”

The smile Thor gives him is forced, a vague and uncomfortable thing. “To be honest, given how you keep calling him a misguided bumbling sentimental fool, _I_ am probably more the one you ought to be naming as Arthur.”

“Ah, but you have not yet been king,” Loki observes with casual grace even as his fresh smile begins to crack about its edges. “I was king, once.”

“And you wish to be again?”

“No.” Thor blinks, and Loki wonders how his brother manages to cross a Midgardian road alone. Then he realises he probably just uses Mjölnir to leap across them like an overgrown cane toad. Pushing a hand back through his hair, he repeats words heavy with the memory of days long past. “I never wanted the throne.”

“You just wanted to be my equal.”

And in Thor’s whispered words, Loki thinks perhaps he ought to give his brother more credit after all. “Arthur is a good name,” he says, soft, and again Thor frowns.

“But these names…they are Midgardian.”

That almost amuses him. “I thought you loved this realm.”

“I do, I just…”

“Consider my options, brother,” he says, and this time he is not smiling at all as his fingers begin to pick at the frayed edges of the quilted duvet cover he doesn’t actually remember attempting to sew. “What am I to do, when the child is born? I cannot bear her home to Asgard. The Allfather would never permit me to keep my own child in light of not only what I have done here, but simply because he never has before.”

“Then stay here.” Thor’s voice is strangled. “Stay with _me_.”

And even given the place where they are sitting at this very moment, Loki still gives him a wry look that speaks of how hopelessly naïve he truly thinks his brother to be. “I hardly think it should be so simple.”

“Because you’re making it hard. But it doesn’t have to be.”

“And where do I stay? Here? In this very tower?” It hurts to think of it, and he stares again at the uneven stitches holding incongruent shapes and materials together as he again picks at their seams. “They put up with me _now_ , yes. I can give them all the novelty of a brood mare like this. But it will wear off.”

“It’s never worn off for me.”

He looks up, cynical. “You were scarcely more than an infant yourself when I was brought to you, Thor. You don’t remember life before I came into it.”

“And I wouldn’t want to even if I could.”

The stark and simple honesty of his brother has never ceased to amaze him, to take him by surprise. Loki has mocked Thor in the past, for his brother always falls for his lies and his tricks no matter how many times Loki plies his trade upon him. And yet, in the end, they are just the same.

“You are a creature of sentiment and little sense,” he says anyway, voice tight with melancholic aversion as he swings his feet down. But still he is drawn to his brother; still he cannot allow them to be apart for long as he moves closer upon the couch.

They are not alone here. Anyone could come in – the door is not even closed, let alone locked. But then Stark’s thrall of brain-wires and glass eyes is everywhere and Loki doesn’t care.

Because Loki is happy.

“It will never work, between you and I,” he says as he holds his brother’s face between his hands, “but we can pretend. We are _gods_ , we have all the time in this mortal realm to pretend what we like.”

Thor says nothing, his eyes the star-rimmed blue of distant Asgardian skies. Loki doesn’t mind. All he wants from those lips is his brother’s kisses, and after a moment: Thor gives them as willingly as he has always done his great stupid blundering heart.

 

*****

 

The situation is ridiculous on so many levels he does not even know where to begin. And yet he lies with strange contentment upon the couch with the duvet tucked up tight to leave him cocooned and warm; the archer rests higher up on the arm, dividing his attention between the screen and Loki himself.

The man should not trust him. The man has every reason in the world to hate him. Yet for the sake of his child’s innocence in the sins of its father and mother, Barton stays with him even now because Thor is out. Loki stirs, just a little, and the mortal blinks back from the screen to him one more time.

“Are you feeling better then?”

“Much.” Half-crippling nausea had kept him curled in a tight ball for most of the morning. It’s not quite unusual, nor unexpected; it has happened before in other pregnancies. Barton had found him in the hallway, swaying and pale and unable to recall the route back to his rooms. Naturally the mortal had immediately wanted to take him to Banner, but Loki had flatly refused. Instead they had ended up in one of the media rooms. Being the one with the most comfortable couches, Loki had willingly curled up before the television while Barton had insisted on seeking on some sort of sustenance.

Loki had entertained himself with tiny mortal children seeking a pirate ship, and then Barton had set about forcing chicken soup down his throat. Grateful as he’d known he ought to be, Loki had been unable to resist the teasing urge to casually observe that in his readings of Midgardian culture, chicken soup had hundreds of years earlier been considered an aphrodisiac.

And Barton had shifted uncomfortably upon the couch’s arm. “No, Ma’s chicken soup helps you when you’re sick.”

One eyebrow had cocked high. “Many _things_ might help a person when they are poorly.”

Somewhat to his (surprised) relief, Barton hadn’t taken umbrage enough to leave him alone. Instead, he actually went and found some recordings that claimed had been deemed verboten, though he won’t say where or how he retrieved them.

“Call me silly,” he said with great glee as he put in the first disc, “but I really just have to _know_.”

By now Loki’s stomach _hurts_ dreadfully, but not from nausea. Laughter has instead torn it all asunder; Barton is not much better, judging by the half-purple complexion he sports. They have cycled around to an earlier episode for a repeat viewing now, and Barton is displaying an alarmingly well-developed singing voice over the aptly named _Doom Song_ when a voice comes from the doorway.

“I…JARVIS said you were unwell, brother?”

Sitting up, he angles himself so that he might peer around Barton to find Thor watching them both with brows brought together in perplexity. Then he focuses specifically on Barton. Despite the brightly-wrought idiocy continuing on the screen, the archer’s laughter stops dead, his face losing much of its earlier hilarity.

“Uh…hi?”

“Hello, brother,” Loki says, pulling a hand free to raise it in a cheerful wave. “The archer was simply keeping me company in your absence.”

“I…that was very kind of you, Barton.”

From the expression he sports, Thor is struggling to understand quite what is going on. For once Loki can’t claim the high ground; he has no clue either. Yet he is more disturbed by the way the archer rises, shaking his head. “I…yeah. Well. I do kind of have other stuff to do, so…”

“You will not stay?” Loki struggles into a proper sitting position, the mismatched duvet half-sliding to the floor. “But we are having such a good time.”

“Yeah, well, if Coulson finds out I let you watch all that he’s going to pitch a shit fit.”

Peering at the screen seems to bewilder Thor all the more. “What were you watching?”

“Something Coulson thinks might give him ideas,” the archer mumbles, and Loki chokes back sudden laughter.

“Oh, give me some credit, Mister Barton,” he says with easy cheer. “I have no need of your inferior human organs.” Patting his side up high, just beneath the level of his heart, he gives a teacher’s didactic nod. “I find my lone squeedilyspooch organ quite enough, thank you.”

“…Coulson’s going to kill me.” His despair is riddled all through with clear satisfaction. “But it was worth it.”

“Glad to be of service.” Then, for good measure, he drops a wink to match. “And I liked your chicken soup very much.”

Barton’s amusement congeals, and he gives a jerky nod. “…yeah. I’m out.”

Loki’s still grinning at the door Barton has disappeared through when Thor clears his throat. “Are you truly well?”

“I am much better.” Twisting back around, he pats the empty space at his side. “Come, sit with me.”

Not that Loki sits for long. As soon as Thor is awkwardly settled he lies down again, this time with his head on his lap. Despite the intimacies between them over the last few days Thor doesn’t seem to know where to put his hands.

“Pet my hair.”

“What?”

“Like Mother used to do for us.”

And he does, though it is only silence between them for long moments.

“She misses you.”

“As I miss her.”

That much honesty between them should hurt, Loki thinks. And yet it doesn’t. He feels oddly lazy and content, curving up into the slide of Thor’s callused fingers through his hair. “She would allow no harm to come to your child,” his brother murmurs, “if you came home.”

“It is not in her power.” Loki closes his eyes, just briefly; it does nothing to stop the pain. “She has never stopped him before.”

“But she has tried.” And when Loki chooses not to reply, he goes doggedly on: “And she will have me at her side, too.”

He cannot help but snort. “You would tell the Allfather your part in this?”

“He must already know.”

“I could not take the child to Asgard.” There’s relief in Thor’s hands, somewhere, and Loki cannot blame him. “No matter whose name it carries at the forefront, it will always bear the stigma of my own beneath.” Swallowing now, he looks down to his own hands, then closes his eyes. “I would wish a better life for my child.”

His brother’s hand is an uncertain thing, coming to rest upon his shoulder with strange slow regret. “I am so sorry.”

“There is time, yet.” He opens his eyes, turns his head, lips taut and folded between his teeth. “If I can stay here. Just a little longer.”

And Thor sighs, pulls him close. “You can stay.”

The beast-doctor comes to see them not much later; Barton must have talked to him after all. With a willingness that seems both alien and inevitable Loki lies compliant upon the couch while the mortal examines his temperature, pallor, heartbeat.

Eventually he sits back, removes his glasses. “So how are you feeling, Loki?”

“I am well.” Still he takes the offered drink, gratefully gulping it down before setting the glass aside. “Have you decided what colour you would like yet?”

Thor’s frown makes him want to laugh aloud, almost as much as Banner’s half-consternated expression. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ll see,” he says, unable to mask his glee. Still, uncertainty bleeds through the cracks of his grin, just a little. “…I am able to stay a little longer, aren’t I?”

“Yes. You are.”

There is deep comfort in this as Loki closes his eyes. Yet somehow, he thinks of the book. _The Once and Future King_. It hadn’t had a happy ending, had it?

He’s already forgotten.

Somehow, though, as he lays his head on his brother’s shoulder and his hand over his brother’s child he doesn’t really care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a lot of very random and quite absurd things in this fic that are in-universe a result of Loki's emotional lability and in real life are mostly thanks to the OP of the prompt enabling me with all manner of bizarre comments. To that end, the DVDs that Coulson forbid Clint from showing Loki are of an odd little Nickelodeon show by the name of _Invader Zim_. This is entirely the fault of the OP, and amuses me so much at least partly because I have a dreadful habit of finding screencaps and putting dialogue from that show to them. The one that’s most relevant to this exchange is [here](http://claricechiarasorcha.tumblr.com/post/20217544858/look-at-you-youve-gone-too-far-youre-a-hideous-blob).
> 
> And you can see why Coulson was concerned. Because…[organs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYRFJ6hOrEE). AND [SQUEEDILYSPOOCHES](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37ERbN2eb0o). I just...yeah. Phil had a point, by god.


	11. Let Me Be No Nearer In Death's Dream Kingdom

In the three weeks since Loki’s collapse and recovery, matters have only become all the stranger. The strangest of all these is that Loki has calmed considerably; though he has his moments of sharp tongued observation, and then his far more disturbing moments of talking in animated whispers to Coulson’s collection of Smurf figurines as they march along a windowsill in the large kitchen, more often than Loki is…

…Loki is content.

Banner has expressed deep concern over it more than once. “Much as you’d think I’d want the credit, I haven’t _done_ anything,” he’d pointed out in deep frustration during one debrief. “His hormone levels are remarkably stable and in some ways I could probably almost _drop_ the mood stabilisers, but…”

Naturally Fury had forbidden it, citing his concerns as to some sort of trickery on part of the liesmith. Banner had just stared at him, silent and judging. Then he had shaken his head, turned his back, and left the room without another word.

Whatever passes through Loki’s mind these days, it does mean Thor is able to leave the building for longer and longer periods as he resumes more of his duties for SHIELD; he even once went as far as Malibu for three days in an effort to divert one of Stark’s antagonists. In the interim Loki had the company of Coulson and Barton and had seemed comfortable enough. With that said there _had_ been ponchos at the end of it. Thor still isn’t sure where or when he’s supposed to wear the one Loki had presented him with.

Still, after observing Barton and Loki watching a movie involving downtown Manhattan being drowned in gelatinous goo with enough familiarity of hilarity that he suspects they’ve seen it more times than either remembers anymore, he takes the poncho off and seeks Fury’s counsel. The man immediately points out he’d already had Banner check the archer over, and more than once. It’s small comfort to hear that Stark had recently completed as personal an inspection of the wards via JARVIS as he could given the distance between himself and New York.

“Anything Barton’s doing, it’s of his own free will,” Fury says, his single eye ever-watchful. “But then I suppose he’s not the only one to have a _unique_ relationship with your brother.”

The comment sits uneasy within him, for all the truth lurking behind it. Indeed their relationship is unique even to their own experience of one another. Since the morning after Loki’s collapse they have not coupled again in the strictest sense, though when they are together they are closer than they have ever been.

But strangest moment comes even later. When he is not experimenting in the kitchen, resting before his preferred television, or winding wool with Coulson in one of the lounges upstairs during the man’s rare moments off-duty, Loki is generally found in the library. Though such places have never held much interest for Thor, he finds himself drawn back to Loki’s company over and over. The beloved voice rises and falls through the pulsing lifebeat of the story he reads to him when suddenly it stiffens, breaks off in mid-sentence.

“…Loki?”

“I…perhaps.”

There is a brilliant smile upon his face as he leans forward, takes Thor’s hand. “What?”

“Perhaps you might feel this,” he says, eager; in fact his eyes hold a sudden and strange and desperate _hunger_ that ripples beneath Thor’s skin like the warning tremor before a tsunami. But it is too late because his palm is pulled under Loki’s shirt and placed upon the bare skin of his abdomen and his brother’s grin is blinding.

“Do you see now?”

Thor has often thought that he is going mad in these days. It seems only right for him to have to suffer as much, for Loki suffers more. He shakes his head, opens his mouth to offer hollow apology—

Then he feels it. A brief little flutter – not quite movement, at least not in the physical sense. His eyes widen, fixed and staring…and all that is before him is Loki.

“You _do_ see.” Loki’s satisfaction renders everything in colour and sound and a roaring in his ears that makes Thor feel as though he might faint. “I told you, didn’t I? I told you!”

Though the Almighty Thor cannot faint, he still feels as though he’s been punted through the Bifröst backward with Mjölnir’s weight planted squarely in his solar plexus. “A child cannot quicken so young.”

“Not in the traditional sense.” There’s a sly and knowing tilt to his head now. “But we are far beyond tradition, brother mine.”

 _Is it madness? Is it?_ Remembered words burrow into his brain with tiny metal claws and gleefully tear and slash, each gouge filling with the blood of a past never far, never forgotten. But the eyes that stare into his now hold not the bright star-sheened lunacy of a reflected frozen Bifröst charge. There are no standing tears, and Loki mouth is not twisted in a desperate lie. _Maybe I’ll pay her a visit myself_ , he had said. Then, Thor had attacked him. Then, Thor had hurt him. Loki had asked for it, and in that moment Thor had been glad to give him just what he wanted if only it would make him happy.

But here and now – Loki had not asked for this hurt, and yet he is deliriously happy in its embrace, soft eyes the shade of the high meadow where they’d frolicked as children. But Loki’s grip is hard and his nails dig into Thor’s wrists, little anchors finding the tendons and muscle beneath the cold skin. It is almost as if he is afraid, even as he presses Thor’s hand deeper against the slight swell of his belly.

“You do feel it…don’t you?”

“Brother,” he says, hand spasming even as his palm is pressed deeper, “brother, I—”

And it is there, still and yet constant: a metronome beneath his touch. It is not yet a heartbeat. More a _soulbeat_ , the quiet steady movement of spirit fresh-wrought in unsullied unborn flesh and in the growing strength of unbroken bone.

“By the Norns,” he breathes, and he is shaking. This is not real. It cannot be real. It is a trick, an illusion, Loki’s madness is catching—

“Yes,” Loki breathes, laughing like the wind loosed across the sky, “by the Norns and the will of Yggdrasil: your _daughter_.”

Then he snuggles deep into the curve of his brother’s body and slips into contented slumber. Thor, despite the low pulse of guilt that moves through his body with every beat of his heart, follows not long after. He doesn’t sleep long, or well; he feels the eyes on them not long after. Loki dreams on. But Thor meets the mortal’s eyes, wordless. Barton says nothing, and slips back into the shadows.

Later, though, they meet again upon the roof. Though he tells himself he only wanted the fresh clear air, to look out over the city, he knew Barton would be there: eyes in the sky, ever watchful. And Thor does not have to wait long before he swings down. There’s no prelude, just the clean clear shot of the inevitable.

“He thinks the baby’s yours, doesn’t he.”

Thor, for all he has prepared for this, cannot speak.

“Eh, it’s okay, you know,” Barton says with a light shrug. “I spent way too much time around circus folk. …hell, I _was_ circus folk. And then look where I _work_. This isn’t even the weirdest thing I’ve heard all year.”

“I…”

“Besides, Stark’s always going on about shit from the legends we have about you guys. Compares it to the other pantheons while he’s at it usually, too.” One hand plays over the folded bow he carries, and he squints with wry amusement. “The Greeks really have it all over you guys when it comes to the family tree being one big ol’ stick, if it makes you feel any better.”

This time, Thor really does have nothing else but silence to offer.

“….actually, talking about sticks, Stark’s been trying to talk me into carrying a mistletoe arrowhead around. Said it would be useful if we ever ran into someone named Baldr and he decided to be a pain in the ass.” Catching the flare of surprised interest in Thor’s eyes, he nods with clear satisfaction. “Want to confirm or deny for me, please? Because I’m just about ready to ram the damn thing up his nose just to shut him up.”

“It’s…no. Not entirely true.” His head is beginning to ache now, the cool air of the encroaching night stinging at his eyes. “Though from what I know of the story of which you speak, it _is_ something our mother would do. She indeed would indeed walk the worlds a thousand times over, just to ask every living thing therein not to harm her child.”

“Is that where Loki gets it from?”

“She loves him still. That is something that will never change.” While Barton continues to fiddle with his bow, Thor stares at his motionless hands. “I just…cannot allow her to see him like this.”

“But she knows what has happened to him here?”

 _She knows more than I ever wanted her to. Oh, the burdens children lay at their parents’ feet…_ “I promised her I would bring him home again.”

“He might let you take him home. Like this.”

Thor grimaces. “It would not be acceptable. And not only for the lies I have told.”

“So this isn’t…normal?”

“No.” Despite his exhaustion, despite his reluctance, he looks up to meet the man’s curious gaze. “Is this really something you wish to know?”

Now it is Barton’s turn to grimace. “Probably not. But…you know. Suppose it could be useful.”

It’s doubtful Barton believes that, but then curiosity is natural enough given the deep peculiarities of the situation – and if the truth be known, Thor feels some relief at the thought of speaking aloud that which he has carried in darkness for so long. “It never happened before we fell to Midgard. Before…we knew.” _Not that it matters; no matter what else passes between our minds and our bodies, he is and always will be my brother._ “But if I am honest with myself, I have never loved anyone the way I have Loki.”

“Yeah.” The archer’s hands, quick and masterful as any musician’s, lie still upon his instrument of death. “Yeah, I kind of figured that.”

This time Thor does not offer anything else. Barton has rifled through his quiver four times before he speaks again.

“I’m really going to regret this,” he says, so quick he stumbles, “but how long?”

“I…am not entirely sure.”

And Barton’s eyes are so wide it is a wonder they do not fall free of his disbelieving face. “Really?”

“I…know when it first happened, of course. But its coming had been going on before that for…quite some time.” There’s a vague flush to his skin, his stomach roiling. “I believe I told you once before that my brother has both a deep need for and a deep suspicion of the love of those he cares for.”

“Yeah, you said you proved you loved him by giving him all the attention he wanted.” There’s an edge to his words Thor doesn’t care for, even though he cannot blame the man for it. “So _this_ is just a part of that?”

“Yes. No.” His fingers feel half-numb as he rubs his head tiredly. “I do not wish you to think I dishonour my brother by playing him false because anything I have done, I have done willingly, but…” The struggle of the explanation exhausts him, leaves muscles aching even though he cannot think there is anything physical in this battle. “…in the beginning, I do not believe either of us thought this would happen. He was goading me, I was angry, but I wanted to prove to him that I cared and he would not _believe_ …”

“So, what, you were playing Gay Chicken with your brother?”

His incredulity makes even less sense than his words. Thor frowns. “There was no poultry involved. And I do not believe it would have been merry even if it had been.”

“What?” Barton blinks, then his face seems to lose years in second, childish delight warring with adult irony. “Oh, _god_. Forget it.” And indeed he does smother laughter despite the gravity of the situation. It evaporates as he goes on. “I don’t actually need details, really I don’t, I just…”

Thor watches, and Barton screws up his face before he can voice the question.

“Does Fury know?”

“Yes.” The answer is short – as had been the decidedly awkward conversation he’d had with the director. The worst of it, though, wasn’t that Fury had known – it was that Fury had _seen_. While the concept of a watcher is nothing new to any of Asgard, his gut had reflexively twisted at the implication of Fury’s method of discovery. Heimdall had been born of the spark of nine mothers, Heimdall had been created for such guardianship. To think anyone mortal might casually view what had passed between them then…

“What did he say?”

“He cautioned me as to concealing information.” His hands tighten. “He had a point. We are a team.”

“And what a team we are,” Barton mutters, now staring at his bow as if it were an alien thing. When he looks to Thor, his expression is not much improved. “You know how I said a few weeks back how disturbing it was, that he was happy sometimes?”

“Yes.”

“He’s happy almost all the time now.” One finger touches the terminal point of an arrow, draws no blood. “And it disturbs the hell out of me.”

“He seems more trusting of us, since we…saved…the child.”

There is a jerk, and then there is blood even though Barton doesn’t appear to notice, his attention entirely upon Thor as he says in fierce demand: “Do you realise how _sick_ that is?”

“Yes. I do.”

His jaw is set and strange when he turns away, voice half-muffled. “You know, you’ve always said, right from the very beginning, that Loki wasn’t really a bad person.”

“Nobody is.” The smile he wears is forced, prescribed, a trained and terrible thing. “In their heart everyone holds the potential to be both noble and not.”

“Spoken like a true future king of a magical kingdom on the other side of the universe.” But he is not angry now – he seems more wry, and his fingers are crooked so that Thor can no longer see the blood. “I never believed you. …but I mean, I kind of knew what you meant. There are plenty of people who’d tell you I have no right to call myself one of the good guys.”

“Yet here you stand.”

“And here I stand.” Though he sits now, and he seems deeply tired. “Your brother’s crazy. You know that. I know that. I always figured that that negated anything like redemption. You can’t redeem a crazy person. They don’t even know there’s a problem in the first place.”

Thor feels as though one of those arrows has been driven into his eye socket, and Barton is now wriggling it around.

“Loki’s always known,” he adds, and the sensation of lobotomy grows worse. “He tried to embrace the madness, but even that rejected him.”

Coldness like death descends upon him, even as Barton withdraws.

“Sometimes I wonder if he realises what is going on here,” he murmurs, eyes upon his stilled hands. “Other times, I look at the way he walks around drugged up with that idiot grin on his face and I think he knows.” His blue eyes rise, a vague and distant condemnation. “And he just doesn’t care.”

There can be no answer to that, Thor thinks. Barton appears to agree, because he begins to work upon his bow anew. Though he has always found the mechanics of the thing fascinating, Thor cannot muster any enthusiasm for weapons of war now. Instead he just stares at his hands and wonders what the Hel he is expected to do about this.

Then he wishes he hadn’t thought about Hel.

“Thor.” The voice is a surprise, though familiar; still he does not turn. “Your brother wants you.”

He shouldn’t be surprised Coulson finds them so easily; JARVIS is never far and usually obliging, though he suspects that even without Stark’s thrall the Son of Coul would simply _know_ things in a way that cannot help but remind him of Heimdall. But there’s a crash of a quiver falling and he looks up, startled; Barton would never treat his weapons such unless matters were dire.

He follows Barton’s gaze and now the Son of Coul is glaring at them both.

“Not. One. WORD.”

“Fuck me.”

“ _Barton_.”

“That was two words, come on!” he shoots right back. “I mean, otherwise it was just totally going to be an inarticulate noise of _oh my god that is so cute and so disturbing and Phil just wait until Steve sees you have a star-spangled crochet beanie made like his uni_ —”

“I’d watch it, if I were you,” he interrupts, with all the perfect serenity of a leaf on the wind. “You haven’t seen yours yet.”

“… _what_.”

While Barton is temporarily browbeaten into goggling submission, Thor takes the opportunity presented. “You have been speaking with my brother, Son of Coul?”

“I saw him earlier. When he gave me this.” One hand rises, settles upon the bright sparkling wool with an odd kind of possessive pride. “I said I was looking for Barton, and when JARVIS said you were both up here he asked me to tell you to go see him in the big kitchen.”

“He could’ve just asked JARVIS to tell us,” Barton mutters, and Coulson raises both eyebrows; they are promptly lost in red and blue and white.

“I believe he wishes all and sundry to see his hat.” For emphasis he executes a half-twirl that would not have been out of place on a catwalk; as Barton chokes on his own tongue Coulson turns to him. “Now, I need to debrief you.”

“Good times,” Barton says in strangled fear, and then follows Coulson out; the look he shoots back over his shoulder says clearly _please you’re a god save me._

Thor just shakes his head. Midgardian fashion makes not the slightest sense to him at the very best of times, and the hat makes even less sense when considered in its component parts. Coulson wears it with a strange dignity all the same. But then, he thinks wryly as he rises, Loki has always crafted well.

His brother does indeed lurk in the favoured kitchen. He is still too thin and his eyes are often over-bright, but there is a softness to his usually steel-sharp features that makes Thor’s stomach twist as he enters the room.

_It’s not possible. It’s not. Banner would have noticed…Loki just needs for it so badly to be true, and you just want to make amends…_

 “I saw the hat,” he says, almost brusquely. Loki starts, looks up from the nest of recipe books he has become engrossed in. Pushing back his dark hair – it seems curlier, in its longer length – he blinks, then smiles.

“Did you like it?”

“It was…an interesting colour choice.”

“I made something for you.” Pressing aside the largest open tome, he pushes to his feet with the vaguest grimace and crosses to the oven. “It’s not quite the same, not without Iðunn’s apples…and Midgardian fare is not quite as ours.” After peering through the door, he turns without rising, letting his lips quirk ever upward. “And to be frank, I haven’t really the experience. Any time I spent in the palaces was only ever with you, when we filched what we could in midnight raids.”

“Which you never ate.”

“I was only there for the fun of it.” Looking back to the tiny window, he at last seems satisfied with what he sees, sliding hands into gloves shaped like the disembodied heads of entirely too jovial pigs. “You were just there for the food,” he adds with considerable cheer. “In retrospect, is it really any surprise that you and Volstagg became such fast and enduring friends?”

And then he is holding it before him and Thor cannot help but stare. It is not the same. It will never be the same. This is not Asgard. But the lattice, the glaze, the rich scent that almost invokes the spice and fragrance of high ceilings and long tables and the laughter and stories and mead that had flowed along and between them…

“Will you not even try it?” Loki’s sudden sorrow is a deep thing, threatening to drown them both, and Thor grimaces.

“I…”

“Am I really so terrible a cook?” He settles the pie dish upon the table, brows furrowing. “Barton enjoyed the soup I made him.”

“You are different.” Like bright shining bubbles the words fall from his lips in shining life, pop suddenly, become nothing more than air between them. Loki raises an eyebrow, slowing slipping his hands free of the pigs.

“Yes,” he says, “yes, I am.”

“I know…I’ve seen you like this before, but I…”

So clumsily he stumbles in this conversation, as if in the dark. But it’s light enough to see as Loki shrugs, every movement as graceful as it has always been. “I am bearing a child, Thor.” One long-fingered hand spiders through his hair as he frowns, distinctly unhappy with memories he can’t quite focus upon. “And I realise you’ve found me…unreasonable…in the past, when you have tried to talk me into sense, but for my child…” This time when he smiles, it is fit to break Thor’s chest wide open so that his heart might slither free to fall at his brother’s feet even before he adds with light joy: “I do not need to be talked into anything, not for her.”

His guilt should have suffocated him long ago. “I just want you to be happy.”

“Ah, but then, life is not all happiness, Thor. There is always dark as well as light.”

Loki has even raised an index finger in the didactic fashion of a tutor, and it is so unexpected Thor might have laughed, if not for the fact he can hardly breathe. “And you are my dark?”

“As you have been my light.”

“Now I’m the dark and you’re the light,” he whispers, half to himself, and Loki frowns.

“What are you trying to tell me?”

That whipcrack of words is the Loki of old – ever suspicious, ever watchful, waiting for the other shoe to fall in every conversation he has ever had. The only defence Thor has ever had in such moments is a shield of utter silence.

“Thor?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” he shouts, frustrated – and immediately regrets the outburst. Yet Loki does not seem cowed by it. If anything, he seems suddenly energised, moving quickstep close.

“If you do not want to admit to it, Thor, I will not make you,” he says, their noses brushing one another as his eyes deepen in intensity, “but _do_ you truly think me a liar in all this?”

“No.” And it is the truth, for all he steps back, for all he steps away. “Because you will do whatever is needed to protect your child.”

“Even surrender you.” That twists Thor’s heart right up into knots, though Loki’s shrug is uneven, sorrowful. “I would not wish it. But if it were to protect me and mine, then I would give you up.”

And Thor’s eyes slip closed like the fall of night across Asgardian sky. “I am a fool.”

“We both are, perhaps.” Warm hands move over his face like the trailing ends of broken spider-webs, gossamer-light. “I don’t want to give you up.”

And his eyes open. “What?”

“I do not know that I could come home with you.” His tongue flicks out, wets a lip that he then begins to chew in what seems a child’s nervous gesture. “But I would stay with you, elsewhere.”

The sudden yearning hits Thor hard: he just wants all of this to be truth, for the baby to be made of flesh and blood rather than wishes and lies. It would not be something to bind Loki to him, or the reverse. Instead, it could be something – some _one_ – who would forever remind them that there is more to all this than only themselves.

But when he looks away it is truly no better; his eyes first skip over, then catch upon the sight of the untouched pie. A moment later Loki reaches forward, knife to hand; Thor’s baby brother has always been so very good with his knives. With almost surgical precision he cuts free a piece, and without the support of a plate he tilts it towards him.

“Brother?”

But Thor cannot reach out. His misery holds him still. Loki’s frown is a dire thing as he leans forward, pressing warm pastry and apple against Thor’s lips. Their eyes meet, hold – and for a moment he thinks he will not accept that which he does not deserve.

“I had a craving, but…I made it for you,” he repeats, the barest whisper. And when Thor opens his mouth to breathe suddenly it is filled with the closest thing to Iðunn’s apples he will ever taste in this realm.

Delicious as it is, he chews slow, swallows only with difficulty. Loki draws back, eyes crinkled at their corners with deepening confusion.

“What is wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and Loki knows he is lying. Loki has always seen right through Thor’s lies but not this one and he reaches forward. Then, their lips meet. This is deeply wrong and he knows it. Yet nothing in his body acknowledges what his mind knows to be true, because Loki is beneath him and the table creaks under their combined weight and when Thor tries to pick him up, tries to take them elsewhere Loki hooks his ankles at the small of his back and whispers _I made it for you, brother_ and then he is ravenous and nothing else will do until they are one until they move together until he can taste home and eternity and _Loki_ in every kiss his brother gifts him.

After, when they stare at the ceiling from amongst the ruins of a not-so sturdy table, Thor wonders how much of the pie they actually ate.

Much later, when Thor has left an exhausted Loki in his bed-nest to return to his own chambers, he finds there is a note tacked to the door. The Son of Coul’s handwriting is the orderly march of a man born to soldier – and perhaps, too, to snark.

 _I think we need to have words about apple pie and appropriate uses thereof. …though maybe we can blame Stark and his American Pie collection. I did warn Barton not to let Loki near those ones_.

Thor decides it’s better not to ask.

 

*****

 

Two days later, after another mission away from the city, Thor returns to a strange silence hanging hushed and heavy over the tower. Loki is not in his chambers, and though JARVIS is immediately compliant in telling him his brother is not far, it is Banner that Thor seeks out first.

The mortal sits in awkward curve in his laboratory chair, as if he had fallen asleep there in five different configurations and is yet to recover from any of them. “He’s not been well today,” he admits as soon as Thor moves to speak, and rubs the bridge of his nose so hard his spectacles fall to the desk. He makes no effort to retrieve them. He does not even acknowledge their loss.

“What is wrong with him?”

“I don’t know.” The pain in the admission is clear. “Did you know, one of the signs of a good physician is that they will acknowledge what they do not know, rather than focus on trying to make everything they find match everything that they don’t?” He is bitter as he turns away, and weary with it to. “I must be a very good doctor. I don’t know anything anymore.”

“But is he well?”

“Thor,” and those dark eyes stare up at him with haunted clarity, “after what we’ve done to him, I don’t think I could ever make him well again.”

It is tiredness, the doctor admits – both his own, and Loki’s. Though still content, he has spent the last day voiding his stomach with alarmingly regularity, which shocks Thor. He had not even known he had been poorly. But then, Loki has always been good at concealing the truth in one hand while casually offering a lie with the other.

He hasn’t been entirely alone, at least; Banner says Barton had spent some hours with him, though he’d been on his own assignment earlier. But when Thor locates Loki he is with Barton in the media room where they spend so strange an amount of time together. The television murmurs in the background while they are in silence; Barton sits upon the arm of the couch upon which Loki lies, his back to the screen and his face hidden in his arms.

“Is he sleeping?”

“He _was_ ,” Barton says with a strange tightness, and as if on cue Loki groans.

“I am not any longer.” But he does not move. “Leave me be.”

“If you are not well, you should come to bed.”

For all the words are muffled, their meaning is clear as a summer storm. “I am fine here.”

“Loki.” He wants to reach out, does not quite dare. “Please.”

With a pained twist Loki rolls about just enough to open his eyes, to fix a half-glazed glare upon him. “You damnable creature.”

For Loki, it is a mild insult – still Thor recoils. It is more the expression in his eyes that troubles him. Then there is the fact Loki struggles to rise, all his grace stolen away by thieves Thor had not even known to guard against. There’s something deeply odd about it even before Barton reaches out with a steadying hand.

And Loki slaps it away with the sound and force of gunshot. “Get your filthy little Midgard hands off me with your filthy Midgard _meats_!”

It makes no sense. But even then, Thor can hear the malice and the misery and the _mayhem_ just lurking behind each and every syllable. “Loki!”

It hits him like a blow; he rocks back, eyes wide – and his pupils have dilated so far there is almost no green left to the iris. “I…” He stares, unseeing; reaches, half-blinded. “Oh, by the Nine, Thor…brother…” And, he misses, pitches forward upon the couch. “How my head _hurts_.”

Then, he just collapses to the floor in a coiled shrieking ball.

Everything becomes much a blur after that. Thor bears him through the corridors again, storm rising outside, rain lashing the windows. There’s a sense of cycling, of the universe folding in upon itself, of the endless ouroboros of good intentions becoming nothing more than a gold-paved path to damnation. Here, in the midst of their damnation, it feels as though Jörmungandr himself curves around the world, squeezing tighter with every cursed step they take.

And at its centre, Loki screams. Bound to the bed by plastic and metal and his own writhing agony, his body is a bow with nothing to fire, nothing even to aim at. Thor wishes to seize his anguish in both his hands, to take this damned cup and drink it deep so that Loki need not, but he cannot. There is nothing he can do to stop this crazed orbit of a planet spun long since out of control. He can only watch until at last Barton drags him away.

The guilt of that drowns him the moment the door closes and he realises what he has done. Barton could not truly make him go anywhere unless he let him. It had just an excuse. Only and always an excuse to give in to his own weakness because he cannot bear to see what he has done to his brother.

His head is in his hands when someone sits heavy next to him. It is Banner – and he knows this without looking, because he can feel beneath the veneer of exhaustion the rising resonance of fury just waiting to be set free in roaring elemental force.

“Thor.”

“Is he well?” he asks, dull.

“No.” He pauses, and his anger is as much a part of him as the human despair of a physician who knows he is beyond gifting hope to his patient. “Thor, how long have you known that your brother is truly pregnant?”

“He’s not.” His eyes burn. “It’s just what we’re done to him. He’s the liesmith, the silvertongue, the illusion and the illusionist. We just made him want this too much.”

“No, Thor.” His laugh is bitter, a low rumble deep in his chest where his own heart aches. “No, Thor – he really is pregnant.

“And this time he actually is losing his child.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is basically where I point at the tags and scream something half-incoherent about tags for triggering content. Because the downhill slide's pretty much total freefall from here on out.


	12. Lips That Would Kiss Form Prayers To Broken Stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, always again -- tagged for triggering content. Because I can't seem to be happy unless I am bringing all the angst. ~~Although bear in mind I upset myself with all this, so yeah. Er.~~

He should have no voice, for all the screams that have ripped through his throat. But then his tongue always has had a mind of its own. Even without making sound it moves with relentless pulse, a writhing throbbing weapon of war which wages its battles against anything in striking distance and still more beyond even that.

And as its prisoner how Loki _screams_.

Twisting and turning as he does in that maelstrom, Loki has no idea how he manages to hear his brother’s words. Low and rolling like the thunder at the shot-silver heart of his golden soul, they trample across everything of even his pain and his fear to resonate deep in Loki’s mind: “I want to take you to Asgard.”

“No.” He has voice enough for this. His throat could be filled with blood and bone and still he would scream these words to the skies above until they echoed across every realm and not only this damned accursed one. “ _No_. They would never…they would let it die before they tried to help it live, and you know it.”

“Loki, please.” His brother is not alone; there are mortals roiling about the room like polluted currents in a once-clear sea, and Loki struggles to focus. His mouth is filled with salt and water and he is drowning but there is Thor and he is an anchor and if he tilts his head he sees the doctor-man-beast and there are eyes somewhere up high perhaps and they watch him without pause nor prayer only steadfast pain and then Thor is talking again even as he doubles over and groans.

And his hand is too warm and too strong upon his shoulder. “I can’t do anything for you here,” Thor says, choking on frustration and misery. “Even Banner thinks that this has gone beyond his arts.”

Loki wants to laugh, even though he thinks if he does his very soul might fly all to pieces, along with his collapsing body. _I thought they were practised at this. I’ve been here long enough. Haven’t they learned enough of their little pet monster then, beyond how to keep me in this little gilded cage while I sing until my heart gives out?_

In answer, he says nothing. Instead he accepts the pain, lets it flow in the same current as the blood in his shrieking veins – and in that, Loki at last goes limp. Thor’s voice rises in a shout and Banner’s hands move over the faces of a half-dozen mechanical thralls but Loki pays it no heed. He closes his eyes, surrenders, and his tongue at last lies still.

“Brother,” and Thor’s voice is the choking cry of a bottlenecked storm, “brother, do not leave me—”

He opens his eyes, turns his head, and speaks low and even. “Then give my seiðr.” The rasp only sharpens the demand. “ _Give it back to me_.”

“I…” Stricken, Thor half-lurches back; in a perverse way, it reminds Loki of many a drunken feast at the high table of the Allfather. “Loki, I cannot.”

Gently, so as not to disturb the slowburn of waiting agony bleeding through every crack of his heart and mind and soul and body, Loki nods his understanding. Then, he smiles; then, he whispers: “If you do not give me back my seiðr, I will rip your heart out and then I will eat it raw and bleeding while you scream.” Tears are pouring down his cheeks but they are as a sunshower to him, warm and barely felt in the face of the grief and fury that rage through his voice. “Give it back to me, Thor, or I will laugh as I do so. Oh, how I will _laugh_ as it beats and spasms and _lives as it dies inside the body that could not even keep your child alive_.”

Barton is gone.

“I…” Thor looks at him as if he is a stranger, but it is something he has seen a thousand times before. Loki is already laughing as his voice spirals upward, hysterical cawing and crowing that reminds him of the beat of black wings and it feels like a dozen beaks are digging into his eyes his heart his belly his _child_ and he just can’t stop laughing.

“Do it! _Do it_!”

The pain grows stronger again, washes over him in crushing agony before drowning him in its weight, roiling and deep. He is screaming now, he thinks dully. Or maybe he’s still laughing; it’s become difficult to tell. His traitorous body, too weak and unworthy even to carry his own child, aches and burns; it is as if he has been thrown upon his flaming longboat and cast out to the sea to turn to ember and ash before his death has taken true hold.

Thor shouts. But then, Thor always shouts. Other voices rise in their own turn, but Loki is out of this game and has no hand left to play. He cannot even watch; twisted in agony, feeling as though he is lashed to the bed even though it is only weak metal and plastic that snakes from veins to thralls, he moves in and out like a flickering spirit. The thing that matters most, he will always feel: the burning coal at his centre. She lives, his daughter fights on in a battle he does not understand the field of, but he watches helpless from far behind the lines as she goes over the top alone. He cannot help her. He cannot save her.

“My daughter,” he whispers, and he struggles upward. The pain is dying again, the cycle reaching a low, but he knows the turn of the World Tree. This is not over.

“I will not allow it.” That is the voice of the darkly-dressed man with his darkly-dressed eye; Loki shudders, even as another voice rises from the mild to the furious.

“You have to!”

“I _have_ to do nothing.”

“You _are_ doing nothing.” Banner’s laugh is short, sharp, perhaps even somewhat unpractised. But then there’s nothing funny here, even as he half-chokes on it. “You’re sitting back on your arse doing a whole load of _nothing_. …so how’s that working out for you?”

The answering laugh is incredulous. “If you think I will give the order to give sorcery back to someone who has tried to kill us more times than I can count, then you’re crazier than he is.” The shadow-man pauses, out in the open for once, and then when he speaks again his voice holds no light whatsoever. “For all we know this is what he _wants_.”

“You’re saying he’d harm his own child?”

A single breath, forced out through his nostrils like a bull preparing to charge. “You don’t even know he’s not faking it.”

“I think I know he’s not faking.”

The tightness of that voice, splintering control so close to cracking clean open, sends a tremor down even Loki’s aching spine. The shadow-spy seems to care not. “Or maybe it’s just the kid doesn’t mean enough to him to matter. He’s stepped all over everyone else to get what he wants, what’s one more casualty on the path to a creature like that?”

That is the moment when he opens his eyes. Each word spills from his lips flat and even, despite the agony that he must swallow whole in order to hold in its screams. “Director?”

The black-clad man turns, and even in that half-second half-circle any surprise is smoothed out to leave only a wasteland of icy disregard. Beneath that chill, even Loki must shudder. In it he finds the memories of return after return to Asgard, in chains and in triumph, each ending the same: the cold ever-disappointment of the Allfather. Even his birth-father the frost giant could never freeze his heart as solid as one single glance from that single eye as he forever disdains everything Loki attempts to lay before his feet.

“Oh, you’re awake?” the other one-eye says to him at last, and Loki manages a thin smile.

“I am.” For all his body no longer feels as though it is on fire, every muscle screams with reawakening agony when he tilts his head to one side in careful nonchalance. “I have something to tell you.”

“Do you.”

“I do.” Though it seems more for the drama, Loki knows in his heart the pause is for himself; he can barely swallow the screams beneath his smile. “If you think I would sacrifice my child for petty revenge upon the likes of _you_ , then you are a thousand times more the monster you named me.” When he chuckles, it is the rapid blossoming of a flechette payload scattering to the skies. “And truly a fool beyond measure.”

“I would be a fool to give you back your magic with the state you are in.”

“Oddly enough, it is so often the fools who live through the fall while their kings lie bleeding upon their empty thrones.” Loosing a cackle to the high heavens, Loki closes his eyes and lets the screams go too. Then he doubles over himself and there is shouting and the machines shriek and he doesn’t know anything until the silence strikes, sudden and strange and impossible.

The pain is gone, but he can feel it lurking in the distance. The ember in his belly burns low, and he is not alone – inside, and out. There is a bowed back before him in the dimness, bent over his thralls, and Loki speaks without thinking. He speaks from his heart.

“If you give me back my seiðr,” he whispers, “then in return I will give you anything you desire.”

“You’re not a genie, Loki.” Banner is surprisingly gentle as he turns from his monitors, light scattering like dying starlight from his spectacles. “And even if you were, you’d be the balls-to-the-wall literal type. I’m going to have to decline, I’m sorry.”

And his regret sounds genuine. Somehow that only makes it all the harder to drag back the tears that want to explode from his eyes. “ _Please_.”

The man’s throat works, and he looks away. Loki can see a decision hovering, twisting, in the balance and not yet fallen; he reaches out, grabs desperately for what he cannot even quite see.

“I could make the other one go away.”

Banner goes very very still.

“I _could_.” With his insistence, he feels his belly roll over in lazy sick spools of reawakening pain, and he grimaces, each word coming faster. “I could strip him away, make you anew. Make you _whole_.”

“How can you make me whole by taking away what is supposed to be there?” The voice, still so very human, is low and Loki struggles to hear. “He’s part of me – as I am part of him. I would be lessened by his loss, not greatened.”

“And yet you speak of him as if he were a discrete part of yourself, something external.”

“He’s in here. He’s always in here.” There’s a funny little chuckle, like a man looking over the edge of a sinking ship while not knowing which option was the better to take. “I didn’t say it was comfortable,” he adds, and now he looks to Loki with the helpless conviction of a man who knows his fate. “But then no-one ever said it had to be.”

“So you will not help me?”

And that hits him where it hurts, and deep. “I am doing all that I can.”

“And you tell me this so I will not destroy all you love?” Loki says, unable to resist a bitter laugh; the man-beast shakes his head.

“I tell you this so you know I am doing all I can.” Leaving his monitors, he comes close, takes the chair at his side and fixes dark eyes upon him. “Believe me, Loki – I will save your daughter.”

“You would _promise_ me this? Knowing what I would do to those who break their promises?”

He speaks without hesitation, without guile, without anything but simple truth. “I promise.”

And beneath the weight of such sincerity the liesmith must turn his head, fingers resting like upon the tiny kernel of pain at his centre. He cannot look anywhere but up, his eyes burning. “I never wanted to be a monster.”

He half-hopes Banner will not hear his half-intended whisper. The man-beast glances back to one of his monitors, then looks back with his mouth held in a soft sad frown.

“No one does.”

When he laughs, it is utterly without sound. “No. No, I believe sometimes, people do.” A barely-held sigh escapes the mortal, and Loki swallows hard even though his throat is as dry as bone-fever. “But I didn’t want this. I swear to you, I did not.”

Now Banner watches him very carefully. It should make him uncomfortable. Somehow, it just comforts Loki to know that someone cares enough to bother. “Look, I…don’t know what happened to you. In your past. Thor’s said very little about it.”

“The shame burns, I suppose.”

“It hurts him too much.” And Loki is the one who has to look away now, even as he goes relentlessly on. “I’ve never seen what lies beneath what you are now, Loki. But I know what it is to think you have a monster there. One that wears the rest of you like an ill-fitting skin suit, even.”

All of a sudden he _can’t breathe_ ; everything hurts and his body arches upwards. His throat is frozen and he cannot even scream. But then, he doesn’t need to – there are crows screaming for him. Tearing loose from the weakened moorings of self-doubt and hated embedded forever in his mind, they rip downwards through his heart and gleefully begin their work on his abdomen, carrion creatures ripping free intestine and liver as they seek that which is the true delicacy, the spark of new and innocent life that he can no longer protect.

“Stop.” There are hands on his, a body looming strong above – but it is not as big as it could be, and Loki could throw this one off. If he wanted to. But their eyes meet and that is his true strength there, for he holds him still as he stares and says in a voice so ordinary as to be perfectly extraordinary: “Loki, you need to calm down.”

“You need to _shut up_.”

“No, you really need to be quiet.” Banner takes a deep breath – in, and out. He does it again. And again. Quite against his will, Loki finds himself following, and the man nods. The fact that it is in relief rather than satisfaction is the only reason why Loki doesn’t drive their foreheads together. “Yes, that’s it. Just…breathe.”

The pain begins to quieten as his lungs continue to work, and eventually Loki’s limbs relax, his spine losing its sharp curvature as he moves back into the sweat-drenched sheets. “Even when I tried not to be what I am, I was,” he mutters, head turning to one side. “This is what I am.”

“You are Loki.”

He wants to laugh. He wants to cry. Instead he rolls his head back up and just stares. “Why are you helping me?”

“Vocation, remember?” The dark eyes drop, and his laughter is just as low. “Or maybe it’s all the red in the ledger, let’s be honest here.”

This particular mortal has always been a study in duality, but in this Loki finds his frown feels different. There is a third that walks beside him here, a skewered shadow, but the closer he looks the less distinct it becomes. “You are concerned about _debts_? I should have thought that when you consider the provocations I have offered, you would calculate that I deserved anything you’ve done to me.”

“I don’t think you’re in the right position to judge that.” Two fingers rise, begin a slow pulsing massage of his temple just below the grey-frosted line of his hair. “Look: I need to you ask you a question, and I need an honest answer.”

There could be a game in this and they both know it. With a sigh Loki folds his cards and steps back from the table. “Ask what you will.”

Perhaps he should be insulted that the beast-doctor just takes his submission as given rather than the honour it is, but then the pain is at a low ebb and neither of them can truly know how long it will last. This is also, Loki thinks suddenly, the most sane he has felt since this whole carnival of weird first began to spin around him like a drunken warrior the night of his first kill.

Anything further is swallowed whole by Banner’s sigh. “Let me say first that I don’t know a lot about the wards.” The word strikes him like lightning, and he jerks; Banner’s eyes crease in sympathy. “Tony developed them. I gave him a hand, sure, but they were always his ba—his pet project.” A cough wracks his throat; he looks away, adjusts his glasses. “So I can’t be entirely sure of what’s going on, though I’ve read a lot of the schematics and talked through theories with him so that I know something that might just be enough.”

And Loki has always been a quick study, even when chained in agony. In some ways, that just makes the lessons easier. “You need something from me?”

“There are frequencies and patterns in your magic that are projectable to our own scientific models of our world, and what we know of such things. But they’re…kaleidoscopic, for lack of a better word. Hard to pin down. That’s why Tony’s always had so much trouble.” Despite his weariness, despite his concern, animation lights up his eyes and some of the lines of his face soften with his half-smile. “Your seiðr is almost like a virus, constantly adapting and changing and evolving beyond whatever boundaries are imposed upon it until it can impose itself anew on whatever it pleases.”

“Yet he seems to have fashioned algorithm enough to keep it caged.”

“That’s a kind of probability control, yes.” He blinks, as if he hadn’t meant to say as much aloud. Then, he gives cedes a shrug and lets it go. “But that’s not my question. My question is how aware of these distinct…threads…of your seiðr are you? I mean, they make a tapestry, I’m sure, but…”

“You mortals do see sorcery is so peculiar a way,” he says, and he hates to admit that the conversation is welcome distraction from the uneasy agony in his abdomen. “Are you asking me if I can identify the part of my power that would allow me to save my child?”

“Is that possible?”

“No.” The sudden light in his eyes goes out, but that is nothing to the death of his own hope. Still, there is wonder and irony in his voice. “You thought I would lie.”

All the man can give him now is a helpless shrug. “I didn’t know what the truth even was.”

“No,” he says, low and thoughtful, and then closes his eyes. “No, I can’t separate the strands. I can manipulate them, work them loose, tie and weave and knit them into new patterns, but…alone, they are a mere thread. And about the most you can do with something like that is hang yourself.” Then he opens his eyes, fixes them upon the mortal with a strength that makes him flinch. “Where is my brother?”

“I…where the observation deck on the fiftieth floor used to be. Or so I last heard.”

Loki laughs – and this is a normal laugh, simple and easy even as everything is twisted and hard around him, and even though he feels the ever-lurking pain his thoughts are clearing in a way he has not known in weeks. “He never changes,” he mutters, and Banner’s shrug is both helpless and amused.

“Do you want him?”

“It makes no difference, I think.” _But it does_ , some part of him whispers, even as he shoves it aside and asks: “How did you save my child before?”

Banner immediately drops his eyes, and Loki frowns at the muttered answer. “Dumb luck.”

At first his mouth opens, but no words come out. Loki closes it, considers, then almost laughs. “At least you’re honest, I suppose.”

The shoulders, bent in this form as if he thinks curving over might force people’s eyes to roll over him without thought, hunch deeper. “You were honest with me. Turn about’s fair play.”

Loki’s hand moves over the tender ache of his abdomen. The guttering candle within flares bright, just for a moment, and with it his hopes grow stronger. “I have reason enough to be,” he whispers, and feels saltwater bitter against the backs of his eyes. “Will you share that luck again with me, Dr. Banner?”

“I will do what I can. I promised you once, and I’ll promise you again.”

And the man-beast is _shaking_. Once the sight might have brought him glee: the great green creature brought low by the false-face of his weak humanity. But it only makes Loki tired now, only makes him wonder if he has been wrong all this time. “Would you really risk the wrath of your betters just to save a bastard child of incest and hate?”

The silence is almost a sweet disorder, and Loki finds himself revelling in it until the man looks up, eyes red-rimmed and the pupils wide. “He loves you.”

He shivers. “It’s not enough.”

“Loki.” He stands, looks to the monitors again. “You can’t give up now. You need to fight this.”

 _I’m not sure it’s my fight_ , he whispers, but only to himself – and his daughter. Her spark flickers again and he closes his eyes, reaching out for her with all the little he has to give. He is just so _tired_. The world spins away from him, and again it is like he is falling. The universe cracks beneath him, maw stretched wide – and his eyes pop open, seeking upward. He’s looking for Barton and he doesn’t know why. The archer is nothing more than mortal, and he is not important. He will wither, he will die, and nothing he does will ever truly matter, not in the greater scheme of all the Nine realms and all those Loki knows lurk beyond them. Yet somehow…he matters. In these days he has been as an anchor. Barton should have hated him. Yet he didn’t.

Then Loki shudders. He is a fool. Like Thor. And even though Loki is the one who holds both knowledge and intelligence beyond Thor’s reckoning it has always been he who stands first, stands highest: his bright brilliant shining brother, casting him always in shadow.

Loki closes his eyes, for the pain is come again and he knows nothing else even as he closes his hands over his belly and keens.

 _O, my daughter_.

“Loki.”

There’s another voice, low and simple. It should not be audible over the screams and shouts of the pulsing world of hate and fear and confusion that lies over him like the half-sphere of the Allfather’s sleep chamber. Loki frowns, then allows his face to go back to its rictus of pain. It is not real. It is a fever dream. His body is failing him and he is failing his daughter but his family had failed him first long ago and they have no place here now.

“Loki, please, look at me.”

This is impossible. But he cannot ignore that voice – even when he’d evaded his father’s orders through subterfuge while Thor just blatantly disregarded them, neither brother had ever been able to deny her when she wanted them.

He turns his head and the impossible is at last the truth. Still they move around him, those toiling mortals frantic upon their crumbling drought-ridden anthill; they do not look, and therefore they do not see. But Loki sees: for she is _there_ , bright and shining and motionless. A beacon with slight smile, a ray of light from another realm…and it is one that has always shone upon him no matter how much darkness he has managed to shroud himself in.

“Mother.”

“My son,” she murmurs in counterpart to his whisper, her eyes burning and blue and all the beauty of a remembered life that to Loki sometimes seems little more than a vague dream stolen from another boy’s head. “Oh my poor, poor son.”

“Why have you come here?”

A pale hand rises as she curves forward like the trajectory of a shooting star, and it is like a cool balm upon his burning brow. Beneath its benediction his eyes flutter closed; the sound of her voice croons like cradle-song, and he is lost in the warmth and the longing of a child’s lost and lonely heart.

“How could you believe I would abandon you in your hour of need?”

It hurts to open his eyes, to turn to her again. But he can’t look away. Even more than Thor, his mother has always been a symbol of home – she is the anchor that lies deepest in his heart, perhaps because he has never known her to leave the shining realm. Though a warrior trained, a shield-maiden fierce and true in her own right and name, her place is Asgard. She guards her hearth with ursine ferocity even as she lays her hand gentle-soft upon the heads of those whom she allows to curl before its warm heart.

He wants it to be an accusation. Instead, his words are a broken elegy sung to skies already long since fallen. “You have never saved my children from the Allfather before.”

“It has never been in my power,” she says gently, leaning forward, and he feels the tears begin to slide with the weight and warmth of blood from his burning eyes.

“You could have tried!”

“I always tried.” The hand moves now, stroking, gentling along the strong curve of his head. “But in the end, Loki, you are the only one who can save your child.”

Again, he hates himself for the weakness of it all, for every fracture and crack in the breaking glass of his scream-defeated voice. “They’ve taken my power from me.”

“But not your love.” With her fingers wrapped about his own he is again true part of her tapestry, not the unravelled corner always picking itself further loose. Her smile burns even as its phoenician strength rebirths him anew. “You will always have that love, Loki. It is what will save us all, in the end.”

Still denial comes so easily to his cracked lips. “Even if my daughter lives, she will be an abomination in the eye of the Allfather.”

“She is yours.” Frigga has always spoken simple truths, and yet they resonate with all the strength of a thousand reasons behind them. “No-one can take her from you.”

And he wants to sob. “But what if she leaves me?”

“Catch her. Keep hold of her.” Her hands about his are so tight it should hurt, and yet he has never felt so tightly bound – and if freedom is being loosed from such chains, he has never so much feared liberation. “Loki. _Never let her go_.”

“Mother,” he says, and he tastes salt upon his lips even as she leans forward, presses hers against his clammy forehead.

“Son.”

And now he weeps like he has not since the first and last time the Allfather had found him in her rose-gardens when he had lost a duel of swords and never sorcery. “Then how could you let me fall?”

“Because sometimes we need to fall before we realise we need to catch hold of something.” Her hands are a lifeline, her heart the anchor, and in her eyes the ocean of her love drowns him even before he casts himself into its depths. “You must never never let go.”

“And if I already have?”

She smiles. “I will always dive in after you.”

And at last he closes his eyes. He must – because in those eyes he sees another. Frigga is the Asgardian ocean, constant shifting emotion beneath his feet as Loki stares over the broken bridge and knows it to be deep and drowning; her son Thor is the sky instead, blue at its centre and darkening to star-shine at its edges, always curving above him while Loki looks up from below with his face turned up high. Thor had been the last thing he had seen before the fall. It had not been their father; Loki had given up on Odin then. But not Thor. Never, ever Thor.

Still, in the end, he’d looked away from even him.

And his outstretched hand.

“You can save your daughter.” The long fingers begin to shift, begin to pull free. “You just need to believe.”

He tries to hold tight. He tries so very hard. “I can’t do this alone. Please…don’t go. Stay with me.”

And still she goes; he hears the rustle of her skirts as she rises, draws back. “A mother does what she must.”

“Stay.” His eyes open, broken and pained. “ _Please_.”

“A mother does what she must for her child,” she repeats, low and soft as her hand moves over his eyes to gentle them closed. “Sleep, now, and take back your strength. You will do what you must, my son – for your child.”

He should be afraid – for her hands are the motion he has seen again and again upon the battlefield, the standing warriors closing the staring blind eyes of those fallen in blood and in glory. But beneath her warmth, her voice low and love, he can do nothing but accept her counsel.

And then he hears them again: the voices. As his mother steps back, as his mother steps away, they are stronger: shouting and shrieking, the rabble of mortals amongst their alarms and sirens. But there are no hands upon him, and somehow he knows the doctor-beast is gone.

“Loki?” So comes another voice of home and hearth, but this is not the one who waits – this is the one who storms in and drags him to his feet, pulls him out into the cold with a song in his voice and laughter in his heart and always always he cannot help but follow. “Loki, _please_.”

He opens his eyes.

“Mother was here.” He says it with wide eyes, almost surprised. But then they stare right through him, sudden horror. “But…but then she left me.”

“Loki…” His brother is so often lost for words, this should be no surprise. It somehow is, watching him flounder so. “Loki, mother was never here. It…it was _you_. You’ve been…away.”

“ _Away_?”

“So far away…fever dreams. Norns, Loki, I thought you would…” He swallows back on his tears, eyes lighting with a ferocious pleasure that almost hurts. “But I brought you back.”

He would frown, if he had the energy. “What?”

“Can’t you feel it, Loki?” When he leans close, it is not his breath that Loki feels but rather the desperate need for validation pouring off him in waves of agonised desire. “Can’t you?”

“I feel her,” he rasps, and it is true. She still lies beneath his hand, tender and tired, and so very very weak. It is almost done, he knows. Even his mother has come too late. She had thought him worthy, even in this, even now. But it is too late, he knows it even as he says softly again: “I feel her still.”

“No,” Thor whispers. “No, and yes – I did it for her as well as for you.” He pauses, and then Loki barely hears him. “I destroyed the wards.”

“ _What_?”

“The wards. I destroyed them.” Now his elation beats against his skin with all the force the torn treasures of a tornado, but Loki is numb. Loki feels nothing even as his brother goes to his knees at his side and props his fingers on his bedside, broad face vibrating with joy.

_Like a dog returning the stick to its master. But I didn’t throw this stick, Thor. I didn’t even ask you to bring it back._

“You can use your seiðr,” he whispers, excitement pouring off him in waves that can only drown those lying helpless upon the shore. “Loki, it’s going to be all right. You can do it now!”

“No.” There’s laughter in him still, somewhere. But he can’t find it. All he can manage is a smile, tiny and crooked and so very much the unwanted runt left out to die in the cold of a war already lost. “No, Thor. I can’t.”

“What?”

He is very still. It is an unnatural state, for him; always in motion, always moving. As Thor’s ever-shadow, it had been difficult for Loki to learn that dance, to follow every move when so often they seemed utterly without thought. Loki is still, Loki is ever-turning thought, but he had learned to move to the beat of his brother’s relentless drum. Now, he is not even a silhouette of his own self, too weak and weary to find the melody of his own life.

“You know, they say when a mother dies in childbirth, it is the same as when a warrior dies in battle,” his whispers, eyes turned now to the ceiling and the unfamiliar sky far above it – for no matter how many years he has spent upon this Earth, it is not his sky. They are not his stars. They never will be, and he will not rest beneath them. “Shall I wait for you in Valhalla then, brother mine?” And he closes his eyes against them. All of them. “Because we all know you will fall in noble battle, Thor. It is your destiny – as, perhaps, this is mine.”

Again, he lets his body go limp, a burden lifted from his soul, letting it hang free. “No.” And his brother’s words are a chain upon him, wrapped about his neck and drawing ever tighter with it tug and pull. “No, Loki. _No_.”

“Let me go.” Rolling his head back and forth, he raises a hand, presses it to his abdomen. It is ending, he knows: a tiny light, buffeted in the darkness, the wick drowning in the sea of wax spreading out like the ever-expanding nebula of a dying star.

“ _No_!”

Oh how like his brother it is, to refuse to take no for an answer. Loki is safe, Loki is secure, Loki is hidden deep within a mortal fortress but it makes no different to one who had grown to his own divinity as the shadow of the god of thunder. He always hears it – he always feels the current of a loosed bolt of silver charging along his skin, the taste of burnt ozone on his tongue as the how world burns and he remains.

 _Call down your storms, brother, it makes no difference,_ he thinks with dull amusement. _Rage against this world, it knows nothing of what we truly are. You could pull it all to pieces and remake it anew, and still it would never know what force had been its road to awe._

But even as his brother fights on in a battle that cannot be won because what he stands to lose is not his to save, Loki sighs.

_Mother, I am sorry._

When he opens his eyes the storm has ended. Time has passed, and he knows not how much. Yet the world seems very different…empty, hollowed out, as if a knife has been dug into his heart and then viciously curved sideways.

But Thor had not lied. There is seiðr in him now, but he is too exhausted to let it flow free. Though it sparks when he whispers, it gutters away moments later as he lapses again into silence. He cannot hold it, he does not _want_ to hold it. The world is become a strange and cold place. It is not so easy, of course. His mind never stops, never ceases to spin in much the same way Yggdrasil’s realms always orbit trunk and limb without pause as she twists between them. _Something is not right_ , his seiðr whispers as it arcs along his skin, skips along his soul leaving behind sensations dropped like raindrops into a still great pool of sorrow. _Look closer, and see what I reflect._

But Loki is drowning at the bottom of that pool, staring up at the surface with a hand over the once-flame low in his belly. The truth cannot be denied any longer.

The candle has been blown out.

There is no sign of the man-beast-doctor, though he feels watchful eyes that see best from a distance. And then there is his brother, always his brother, seated and his head bowed at his side.

With great effort he moves a hand, extends it forward. When the beloved face turns up, a melted mask of despair, Loki smiles and his words are the thin promise of a forgiveness he does not truly know how to give for some part of his mind whispers anew that he does not know anything, anything at all. Still the blessing of a recently-delivered mother moves from his lips, whisper-light upon the cursed Midgardian air of the room where his daughter had died.

 

_"May all the kindly beings help you  
Frigg and Freyja and more of the gods  
as you warded away   
that dangerous illness from me."_

 

“Loki,” he says, “ _Loki_ ,” and now his brother sobs like a child. Like their child will never cry.

Loki feels he should be angry.

But as he closes his eyes with his hands flat upon the mattress on either side, he wearily thinks all he really wants is his mother’s arms. He might not be worthy of them. But that will never stop his need.


	13. Here They Receive The Supplication Of A Dead Man's Hand

Thor doesn’t really know how it came to this: standing on the edge of a Midgardian river in the cold and the gloom in the darkest hour before the dawn, his brother too-thin and shivering despite being wrapped in one of Banner’s borrowed coats. But then it _is_ ridiculously short, both in the full length and in the arms. There had really been little better option; Thor never would have got into the coat at all, and there had been no time to get another. For that, he reproaches himself with sharp disgust, though that weight is but a drop in the pool of his true guilt. Still, he should have known it would come to this. He should have been _prepared_ to deal with this.

But in the end it had actually been Barton who had suggested they come. Even Banner had been the one to second it first. And before anyone could reconsider the balance of their sanity the three of them had removed Loki from the relative safety of the warded tower and brought him down to the river.

If Fury should hear of it, it might be the end of everything. But Thor is beyond caring – because when he turns his head, the silhouette of Loki’s face suggests that he cares even less. Nothing of his once-brother lurks in those eyes: whether the watchful laughing sarcastic brother of before the fall, or the relentless furious vengeful not-brother of after.

This Loki is still and silent stone, and every day he is eroded further by the pressure of the sea Thor has already half-drowned him in.

The water here moves in sluggish resentment, and Thor hates how inadequate it seems for what they require. It could not be more different from Asgard had it tried, this dirty little town on the Hudson, with its polluted conduit stretching before them. But then, since his own fall, Thor has learned to look beyond the external. The city truly is concrete chaos with no inherent beauty of line or design, haphazardly individualistic in comparison to the perfectly planned and executed divine beauty of Asgard. But that is the human way – they have the gift of only short lives, lived in brilliant bursts; this momentary existence means so many souls will leave behind pieces of themselves to colour and change and create the spaces in which they lived in. It is therefore small wonder that their world should become a glorious kaleidoscope of ever-changing shape and sound while those component pieces never ever vanish from its whole.

Therefore whatever else it is, the river is always and forever water – and it will bear the weight of this burden where even he himself, brilliant god of a golden shining distant world, cannot.

The tiny longboat rests in the arms of the one who had carved it. Neither Barton, Banner, nor Thor himself know exactly where Loki got the wood or the tools from, but Barton had wryly observed that the Son of Coul is a man of hidden talents. While it was perhaps bad enough he taught Loki to knit, Thor finds it both particularly impressive and deeply touching that Coulson would go near him with genuinely sharp implements. But then, again, Loki has shown such little interest in revenge in these darkened days.

_He does not even know there is revenge owed him – or at least, he knows not the depth of betrayal that has brought us all to this filthy broken shore._

There is no body. The babe had been so very young – to a mortal, it would have been as a barely-felt spark. To Loki, it had been _known_ , though in soul more than self. She had not yet awakened to the world waiting beyond her mother’s cradling warmth. Upon her death, Loki’s body would have taken her back, her mortal bonds dissipating into his own. In some bleak way Thor half-believes he ought to take some comfort in that, for while the child was Loki’s bone and blood, she had also been of his own – and now there is a part of him that is forever a part of Loki, and in a way even when apart they can never be far from one another ever again.

But given the lie of the brief life of their daughter, perhaps this is more is a brand of betrayal that Loki does not even realise has been burned indelibly upon his soul.

Even without a body the longboat is not empty; they have filled it with flowers and fruit and gold and silver, all scattered with tiny winking jewels in all the shifting colours of the rainbow bridge. Amongst it lies a figure of limp white limbs and black button eyes, hair a snarl of no-colour yarn in the darkness of a New York morning.

And Loki mourns as he bears the boat down to the water’s edge. At first he stands there with silent agony, the silver-sharp blade of the moon cutting deep across the sunken lines of his face. He bleeds his sorrow as he flows to his knees. Thor wants to go to him, but instead he stands back. It is not just that Loki seems so untouchable, has _been_ so untouchable since this all began. It is also that feeling that Thor does not deserve the release, the peace of redemption given all that he has done to bring this moment to terrible brilliant fruition.

He does not know what Loki says. From this distance he sees only the movement of lips: a whispered prayer, or a promise, or perhaps simple apology. A steady hand passes over the doll’s button eyes, which never opened and therefore will never close. Then Loki thrusts forward with surprising strength and their not-daughter is borne upon Midgardian water to her final rest.

Loki steps back. As his arms curl around his body, holding himself tight, Thor aches to go to his side and still he dares not. But Loki turns – and Loki looks past him, eyes black holes in the darkness that settle upon the archer.

With a slight nod, Barton steps forward. The bow is to hand, already blossomed open to full strength; in the other he holds a single wooden shaft tipped with iron wrapped in linen dipped in oil, fletched with ink-black feathers. Loki had crafted it himself only hours before. Thor had watched, hands impotent and empty. From the other side of the room, concealed in its darkest corner, Barton had done the same – and despite his undeniable expertise, the man had offered nothing but his still presence.

Now he uses his skill in equal silence, moving to nock the arrow. But Loki shakes his head, one palm held outward and upward in wordless request. Barton offers the arrow and Loki takes it with both hands, goes to his knees. His lips upon the shaft are motionless, wordless, his eyes closed and dry though is agony is a tangible thing. Then he offers it up, offers it back with its flaming head, and with grave purpose Barton accepts the burden of Loki’s last gift to his child.

A moment later, it flies: the perfect arch of the arrow into the too-small longboat. For a moment the darkness continues unabated, and for the first time Thor wonders if Barton could actually miss his shot. Then, the flames dance up like a cry to the heavens and the boat begins to burn.

Watching shades of scarlet and ochre play over the ravaged white canvas of his brother’s face, Thor hates the silence between them. He wants to fill it. But it is not his talent. It is not even his right. Still he feels it is his responsibility – still he feels he should touch him, hold him. But Loki is made of shadow, and Thor fears that should he try his hands might go through him as if trying to catch and hold smoke and broken mirrors.

Then, a voice rises. It is a low hum, gentle and meditative – just sound, at first. There are no words. But as it grows, a dying flower opening its petals to the dawn just one last time, he begins to make them out.

_Let the sun rise in the morning – let the clouds take on a silver sheen. And I’ll remember you with each dawning, as you rest in angel’s wings._

In the distance, the sun begins to claw upward from the horizon behind the uneven skyline. But the boat is already burning, already sinking, and Thor’s mouth tastes of the polluted waters of a well of fates that can only be cleansed by the end of all the worlds they have already drained dry.

 

*****

 

“I cannot stay here,” Loki says, when they return. But Thor takes his hand, takes him to bed, and as he tucks him beneath the bedlinens like he is the tiny brother he was so many years ago he presses dry lips to a cold forehead and whispers the only truth he has left to him now:

“You can stay as long as you want.”

As the days go by, still they drug him. It is a bitter argument; Banner had destroyed one of the other labs during one of them, and he had not even indulged in transformation before doing so. But Stark and Rogers are promised to return within the week – and in the end Thor can understand the continued deception in at least one respect.

Loki had not slept in the three days after the death of his daughter. While they do not need sleep in the same way or quantity as mortals, their bodies need time for rest and regeneration. And Loki is fading away even with it. Pale and drawn, with weight both unnecessary and unnecessary stripped from his bones, he will not sleep unless forced to. Otherwise he walks the halls like a wraith and Thor wears the leather from his own boots as he follows him like a lumbering clumsy shadow.

And the arguments between Banner and Fury continue. Thor must become involved, whether he cares to or not, when Fury decides: “At this point, I think you should just take him to Asgard, no matter what he says.”

“It is not so simple.”

“I never said shit about simple,” the man snaps back. “And to be frank, I think sending him out of my sight and my supervision before Stark and Rogers get back really is still asking for this whole goddamn house of cards to fall down and paper cut us all to death, but there you have it. I still want him gone.”

“Why?”

The look this earns him is both pitying and exasperated. “What if this is just what he wanted?”

“You cannot possibly believe that this is what Loki wanted.” Banner speaks slowly, but the curl of his lips is darker than his mild words. “You’ve seen what this has done to him.”

“I saw that you took a war criminal out of the compound that holds him in check.”

“And what did he do except mourn the child we helped kill?”

To the surprise of all it is a voice from the shadows that speaks. “Would it help him?” Barton is still, his eyes ever watchful as they move from one to the next, gauging targets. “To go back to Asgard?”

And Thor thinks of it with all the burden and beauty of memory. Not one of the Avengers has ever accompanied him to Asgard. Sometimes he wonders if seeing it might help them understand something of why he is as he is, and perhaps would even tell them something of the same for Loki. But in a way he fears that they will not see it as he does. Perhaps, to mortal eyes, it will be only a shining brilliant illusion that the Aesir willingly lose themselves in so that they need not flip their coin over to see the tarnish beneath.

“I do not think so,” he says, heavy. “I call it his home, but I know that he has convinced himself otherwise.”

“It will have to happen sooner or later – whether before or after they return.”

“I know.” Thor stands, clumsy; all he wants now is to destroy something. But Mjölnir will stay in his room. His bare hands will do such work well enough on their own, for all they are slick and slippery with the metaphorical blood of countless betrayals. “Excuse me, I must go.”

He should go to Loki, and he knows it. But he rounds the building three times before he does. Of course he finds him gone, though Stark’s thrall quietly tells him where to look.

He sees them before he hears them.

 

_It comes down to reality  
And it’s fine with me ‘cause I’ve let it slide  
Don’t care if it’s Chinatown or on Riverside  
I don’t have any reasons  
I’ve left them all behind  
I’m in a New York state of mind.  
  
_

Every word shivers through his mind like a condemnation from the lips of the Allfather himself – because then he remembers that which had brought him here in the first time. Standing before the Bifröst, with snow from Jötunheimr melting in his hair and blood of the frost giants upon his hands and hammer and head, the Allfather had shouted at him: _You are a vain, greedy, cruel boy!_

He’d thought once he’d moved beyond that, learned to be something more, something worthy. But here he stands:

Vain to think he could save his brother.

Greedy to claim all his love and need.

Cruel to think it was all for Loki and never ever for himself.

And he remembers Mjölnir – first the crippling loss of her weight in his palm, and then the silver song of her haft when she had returned to his hand. It is no wonder he cannot bear her presence now.

_And so you remain an old man and a fool, Father, to have ever deemed me worthy of her…or of the loved ones I cannot help but betray over and over again._

Thor finds them together on one of the couches, the television on mute while white static dances upon its screen. The only sound is Barton’s voice and its careful rise and fall over the notes of the Midgardian song. As he watches from the doorway Thor feels a sense of disconnection, for they do not touch. Loki is upon the couch, curled about his empty belly; Barton sits upon the floor with his back against its front, head turned upwards as he climbs to the top of his collapsing tower of song.

In the silence that follows its end, Thor ventures inside. Barton has known him to be there the whole time, he is sure; he shows no surprise when he turns his face, eyes weary.

“He couldn’t sleep.”

But he sleeps now, Thor sees. He swallows hard, words a bare whisper. “What have we done?”

And he shrugs, elbows sharp angles upon his raised knees. “I don’t even know anymore.”

It is not a peaceful sleep, though it is deep enough that when Thor lays a hand upon Loki’s shoulder he does not stir. Tightening his grip, just a little, Thor gives a jerky nod, his hands heavier than the burden they must now bear. “I should take him back to his room.”

“No.” The word is harsh, and when Thor jerks around Barton looks almost surprised by his own vehemence. “No, just…leave him.” There’s the vaguest attempt at a cajoling smile before he gives it up entirely. “I only just got him to sleep.”

This reality of impossibilities hurts him even more than a thousand of Loki’s laughing mocking teasing cruel illusions. Staring into the haunted face of a mortal who ought to hate Loki, who has in fact every reason to hate Thor’s brother for what he has done to him and his world, Thor can only speak in hoarse syllables of little sense.

“You have the voice of a master bard.”

“Well, I feel like a major bastard.”

He wants to laugh. Instead, he bows his head like he might cry instead. “I believe that we all do.”

“Stark and Rogers say the mission is nearing completion.” One hand, rich with tremor, moves back through the short hair. “Do you know, I can’t even remember anymore why we did any of this?”

Thor answers with silence, and Barton takes a shaking breath.

“I know what it’s like to be unmade. To be drained of everything you think makes you what you are, and then be filled up with something else. Some _one_ else.” Again he pauses, forcing himself to struggle onward. “I just keep thinking…we’ve pulled out so much of Loki.”

The truth of that would knife him deep, if he hadn’t already known it to be true.

“But we haven’t given him anything _back_.” He takes a shaking breath; how peculiar that his voice trembles now, when it had been so steady upon his song. “He’s just…hollow, now. There’s nothing there.”

And suddenly he cannot talk about this anymore. Thor takes a blind step forward, voice rough and clumsy. “Are you sure you don’t wish me to look to him?”

Barton raises a hand, and with even only that it stops him dead. “We’re fine here.” And he cannot deny him that. Because Thor remembers his aim when he had loosed the arrow into the longboat. Because Thor remembers what he had said long before it had come to that.

_I kill. I admit that._

_But I do it with one clean shot, or I don’t do it at all._

_And as far as I’m concerned, this one was missed long ago._

For that alone, Thor must give him this now. “Thank you,” he says, low, and turns. Barton says nothing. There is perhaps nothing _to_ be said. And with no-one to say nothing to Thor goes to one of the great training rooms and works himself to exhaustion. Between Banner and Stark he can almost do what he wants without levelling a city block, though the storm that rages over the isle of Manhattan does grind ordinary lives to a halt for several hours while the flooding is dealt to.

As the storm ends Thor goes outside to stands in the guttering rain. Thunder and lightning, though both lessening and dying, still flicker and burst across the night sky. He has never felt so small. Even standing at the heart of the storm he cannot believe not that he will ever again be deserving of its power.

Loki had once told him that he only wanted to be his equal. In the end he had decided he could not rise to his level, and had instead tried to drag Thor down to his. So often in those battles, whenever he extended a hand, Thor felt as if Loki would take that offered hand only to try to break him, over and over again.

Now, Thor thinks he has broken Loki and there is no-one left who might know how to put him back together.

 

*****

 

The return of Stark and Rogers is a strange non-event considering what has happened to enable it to occur. Thor does not even want to see them. It cannot be avoided, but instead of going to greet them as would be his wont he stays in the laboratory with Banner. He has no desire to be at the debrief. But then the Man of Iron, sans iron, walks in and stops dead. Thor cannot blame him, consider he is staring at Banner playing with what he had told Thor was called a drinking bird. It’s very simple, compared to what Stark usually gives Banner to experiment with, but there’s something almost soothing in its constant back and forth motion.

Stark does a doubletake – twice – before he slides into the seat opposite and between them and puts his feet up on the table; the bird overbalances, the cup tilting dangerously. “So, anyway, I stopped by FAO Schwartz on the way in and got some Baby Einstein DVDs for the little pretend team mascot. Should I leave them here with you guys, or am I allowed to push ‘em under Loki’s door?”

Both raise their eyes from the fallen bird, turn in almost perfect tandem to face him. Tony rears back, hands up where they can be seen; his smile hasn’t altered a bit despite the clear unease beginning to draw his brows together and down.

“And yeah, I know he’s already got an evil genius for a mommy, but you know.” He picks up one, squints at the playlist. “…maybe we can tilt him in the right direction with… _what_ is this, Beethoven? Huh. Should have gone for Wagner. _Ride of the Valkyries_ ought to go down a treat, don’t you think?”

“That’s not funny, Tony.”

Banner’s voice is low, something almost gentle. It confuses Tony, though as with everything else he covers it over with gleaming false cheer. “I was maybe stretching it with that one, sure. But seriously, you have to laugh, don’t you?” Nesting his hands behind his neck, he manages an easy shrug. “Otherwise, you’d have to cry at the way we’ve got a fake-pregnant pseudo Norse trickster god in the guest wing.”

“He’s not pregnant, fake or not.”

Tony tilts forward, almost falling out of his chair before his feet slam to the floor. “What, we stopped doing that?”

“In both respects, yes.”

“ _Both_?” All humour has fled from him now, his dark eyes moving in quick back and forth between the two hunched figures at the laboratory table. “…hell, do I even _want_ to know?”

“Was your mission a success?”

Stark and Banner are easy companions, under most circumstances; that is likely why he stares at him first, though when Thor tiredly voices his question he turns to face him with immediate answer. “I…yeah. _Eventually_ , but yeah.” And he does look deeply reluctant even when his mouth runs away with him as easily as it always has. “So, bearing in mind I might not actually want the full answer to this one: what the hell’s going on?”

“Fury will debrief you.”

“He’ll also debride me on about seven different levels, but…” He peers around, snags a half-eaten bag of Banner’s favourite mixed nuts. “…no, honestly now, why do I feel like I’ve walked straight into an evil parallel universe?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Will it explain why we got ponchos in the post?”

Both Thor and Banner answer that one in perfect unison that has even Tony Stark raising an eyebrow. “ _What_?”

“Classified mission. _We_ barely knew where we were. And then suddenly: ponchos.” Setting the nuts down, as if no longer hungry, Stark leans his hips back against one bench and scrunches up his face. “Is this something to do with the way the wards broke? Because that was _you_ , wasn’t it?”

Thor frowns. “I believe he made them before…before that.”

“You mean _Loki_ made them?” Stark looks like he needs a drink. Banner, on the other hand, looks like he’s already drunk the whole liquor cabinet; Thor just feels like he’s taken upon himself every hangover on offer. “…so does being fake pregnant turn him into a domestic goddess or something? Because I suppose that sits with the pregnancy thing, but…wow. Your _faces_ right now. I am really missing something here, aren’t I.”

Despite the weight of the stares upon him, it isn’t Tony who apologises. It is Steve who comes to him several hours later, finding Banner and Thor now alone in the laboratory, Barton is no-where to be seen, and when prompted JARVIS offers that Loki in his chamber, sleeping. As he so often does, now.

Rogers spends a good two minutes fidgeting in silence before he raises his head and with all the simple courage and conviction of his complex heart, says true and strong: “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for what happened to you, and your family.”

Thor nods, unable to do anything more to accept this. Still, he must ask. “You have succeeded in your mission?”

“We have.” Dressed in simple civilian clothes that still somehow leave him looking one step out of place to the rest of the world, even to Thor’s non-native eye, Rogers at last drops his eyes. “But this cost us all a lot. Maybe too much”

“Yes.”

When he looks up, his eyes are straight and true. “Do you want to go a round?”

“What?”

“Because I want to hit something. Hard.” He even allows himself a half-smile now. “Given the state of the training rooms on the thirtieth floor, I think you know it helps.”

It doesn’t. Not entirely. It’s just a way to stop thinking, but such companionship it is a gift from the Captain and for all Thor cannot imagine believing he deserves anything like peace in these days when it’s clear Loki can find nothing of the sort, he cannot turn such an offer away.

Thor doesn’t see Stark again until the following day, and even then it is unintentional. The only reason he’d gone to Banner’s lab was to see how his issues with helping Loki sleep and not leaving him an utter vegetable are being resolved; instead he finds the man assisting Stark in fiddling with the wards. While in no real mood to speak with him, Thor cannot be rude. It is not his fault. The blame lies truly with himself.

“Hey, big guy,” Stark says first, peering through one of his many screens. “Sorry about yesterday, by the way. I’d just got in – I honestly had no idea.”

“It was not your fault.”

For all Stark generally manages to be unfazed by most things, and for all he feigns it now, Thor can still sense a vague undercurrent of awkward confusion beneath his next easy query. “Is that really a normal thing, where you’re from?” His fingers move quick over the screen, a soundless symphony as if he is a musician playing only upon the air. “I mean – _gods_ , sure, but honestly I can’t say I’d have picked you and Loki for the star-crossed lovers type.”

“Tony, leave it.”

“I will.” Banner rocks back in clear surprise, which earns him a peculiar look that almost might be _hurt_ from Stark. But then the man is moving, reaching across the bench to snag a box. As he begins to rummage, he gives a little shrug; it pulls the material of his shirt across his chest, just revealing between the opened weave a brief glimpse of his arc reactor’s glow. “Look: I’m just saying that while there’s no way Loki and are the same kind of people, we’ve got a bit in common. And if there’s one thing in life I’m certain of, it’s that any relationship I’m in has to end badly. Because I’m in it.”

Thor stills. When he looks up Stark is still in constant motion, fingers working over the wrapper of what he’s pulled free of the box. When he catches Thor’s eye, he tenses his shoulders, lets them go.

“But sometimes I’ve been proved wrong.” Taking a bite of his granola bar, this time he gives a verbal shrug around it. “I mean, I’m still here, aren’t I?”

The silence of both Banner and Thor himself is answer enough for them all. Stark finishes his bar, tosses the plastic aside, and goes back to his screen.

“How is he, by the way?” he asks, pushing schematics and symbols and equations about the screen like Thor might punt enemies with Mjölnir upon a battlefield. “Fury seemed to think I’d just antagonise him, told me not to go anywhere near him. Where he got that idea from I’ll never know.”

“He’s very quiet.”

They all startle; Thor and Banner jump, and Stark swears in ways that Thor suspects not even native Midgardians would easily follow. Given he doesn’t give anyone a chance to get a word in edgeways, he’s also the one to become articulate first. “ _You_ went and saw him?” he asks, goggling at the Captain where he still stands in the doorway. “ _Why_?”

“His child just died, Tony.” He steps inside, gives Thor a nod; for all its brevity, the open sympathy of his eyes is that of one soldier to another. “No matter what he’s done, he doesn’t deserve that. No-one does.”

Thor nods, his heart an aching bleeding wound that he is not sure will ever heal no matter how far from the battleground his life takes him. “What did he say?”

“He…gave me a flying monkey, actually.”

There are times when Thor is sure the Alltongue is not in operation. It’s usually far more likely to happen with Stark rather than Rogers, however. “Flying… _monkey_?”

“Yeah.” He rubs his head, perplexed. “Little knitted thing. It was…kind of cute, actually, but…how did he know what my favourite movie was?”

“Oh, that was me. Sorry.” All swivel to stare at Stark, and he throws his hands up in immediate defence. “It was before we went! He was bitching about people watching him while he was sleeping, and I told him that was a trend Phil started that when he went all _Twilight_ on the Cap here. Because he used to do that, you know. Watched you while you slept, I mean.”

Rogers looks even more perplexed, but then between that and exasperated affection it’s about normal for his interactions with Stark. “I never have any idea what you’re talking about, Tony.”

“All part of my charm.” But even with the glibness of that answer his eyes darken as he turns to Thor. “Still. Monkeys. _Flying_ monkeys. That’s weird…even for the guy who did that thing with the ice-cream last year.”

And before anyone can say a thing about that Barton’s voice rings clear from across the other side of the room; Thor had not even heard him come in. For all anyone knows, he’s been there the whole time. “Stark, take it from me – that’s not even the weirdest thing we’ve seen all week.”

And even Thor, the mighty god from an entirely different realm to the gathered mortals, cannot disagree with that.

 

*****

 

Less than a day later Loki comes to him in the dark and the storm. Shrouded in a black robe that cannot shield the fact he wears nothing beneath, his pale skin shimmers like ice where it gapes at throat and sleeve. “I understand that I have outstayed my welcome,” he says, whispered and dull even with the star-sheen across his eyes and Thor staggers up from his seat before the window.

“Loki, _no_.”

At that, he flinches. Thor regrets the choice of words immediately: they are echoes of a past they can never quite leave behind. Even when he tries to forget, some part of him will never do anything but remember. He reaches forward, catches Loki’s upper arms between his hands, and mourns for the fact his hands almost encircle them completely. And Loki smiles, soft and slow.

“I am leaving.”

The words hit him low, and hard; he staggers forward, his grip on even this shadow-wraith of his once-brother the only thing that keeps him upright. “Where…where are you going?”

“Elsewhere,” he says, his shrug small and his eyes utterly distant. Thor’s hands tighten and he knows he is bruising him but he can’t let go; he is filled with the fear that if he does Loki will evaporate like so much smoke and then this time he really will be lost to the spaces between realms for now and for ever.

“Come home to Asgard,” he whispers, hoarse voice dragged across the broken glass of his throat, and Loki shakes his head just once. It is enough.

“It is not my home any longer,” he murmurs, flat as the colour of his eyes. “And I would not care to now, even if it were.”

“Then at least let me come with you!”

“No.”

Thor wants to throw his head back, to scream his sorrow and his frustration to the distant alien heavens far above them both. But the only person who can give him aid now stands before him, a god as still and motionless as a stone idol upon a broken altar. “But _why_?”

“Because I do not wish it.”

“I have failed you, I know.” He leans forward, speaks in a great rush as if the force and the emotion of his words will make up for their lack of elegance and persuasive phrasing. “But I would try to make amends for what I have done.”

“I do not wish it,” he repeats, and begins a long slow lean backward. “Let me go, Thor.”

“I can’t.”

His hands rise, and with surprising gentle strength Loki untangles his brother’s fingers from about his arms. “Then you will only make me do this.”

“You said you would eat my heart,” Thor says, sudden and miserable; it makes no sense, he thinks, but he can think of no other way of calling his brother back to his side. “But don’t you know you already devoured it whole long ago?”

Loki watches him then as he might watch the sun go down and the stars come out – silent and still, eyes flickering with the depth of every thought hidden behind the reflections in the unfathomable depths. When he speaks at last, Thor somehow already knows that he has lost him.

“I would wish one last thing from you, before I go.”

“I will give you anything.” His fingers are pressed to his temples, as if that might stop his aching mind from bleeding free. “Though everything would not be enough, I know.”

Loki nods, the motion all slow aching sorrow. “Then can I have this last moment, please?” Instead of moving away this time he comes closer, eyes fixing upon Thor as if he is all that is left at the centre of a universe long since burnt away. “Let it be as a reminder, perhaps.”

“Of what?” And Thor cannot look away from him, eyes following the slow back and forth curve of Loki’s swaying form. “Of how I failed you?”

One hand, cool and white, comes to rest upon his face. “Oh, _Thor_.” Compassion and despair drip from every pore now, as if Thor’s words have poked him full of a thousand tiny holes like stars in the sky so that the light of the secret universe behind might come pouring through. “Thor, how do you expect me to punish you, when you have already punished yourself so?”

To that he can say nothing. The silver strands of Loki’s words bind him like chains made of the blood and bone of their own child, and Loki steps forward to take what he will. The passage of his hands is simple and knowing, stripping him naked, leaving him bare.

“I need you to sit,” he says with easy sadness, and Thor cannot look anywhere but up as he is pushed down.

“Is this what you want?”

“Yes.” Loki still wears the robe as he goes to his knees before him. Resting hands upon his thighs, Loki gently fans them apart so that he might rest between them. His hair is even longer now, Thor sees, a broken single raven wing reaching far past his shoulders to the anchor points where wings would be, if he knew how to fly. Unbidden, the voices of their selves of what seems a thousand years ago move through his mind again:

_Ooh, nice feathers._

_You don’t really want to start this again, do you? Cow?_

As if reading his mind, plucking forth the memories of a coronation never realised, Loki sighs. “You are a hollow man on an empty throne.”

“I am sorry for what I have done.”

“As I am I.” Loki’s eyes are almost all black, only the tightest thinnest ring of green remaining as his breath quickens, his cheeks afire with sudden high colour. “Oh, yes, I am so very sorry for all you have done.” Then there can be no more words for he leans forward and that silver tongue _licks_ , following in easy familiarity the thick vein of his cock. And despite his despair, despite the fact that it is wrong his brother should go to his knees before him now and in such a fashion, Thor’s hands tighten on the chair’s arms and his spine stiffens and his back _arches_ and he is living even while he is dying and when he looks down Loki looks up and his eyes are now the green void of a dancing aurora across the night sky of a fallen realm.

“You taste like storm.” Maybe he’s smiling, maybe he is frowning; hazed and helpless, Thor can’t tell. He wonders if he ever could. “You always have, did you know that? I suppose you always will.”

“Loki,” he chokes. “Loki, don’t leave me.”

He shakes his head, though Thor knows it does not mean he will stay. But for now he bows his head again, those clever lips stilled from words but not of motion; they take him in easy welcome, swallow him down. It all seems so practised, so easy, when it is not actually something they have often done. Before, it had been a power play, for even though Loki would be the one on his knees with Thor’s cock in his mouth he _had Thor’s cock in his mouth_ and in the end Thor had never been sure if he would use his tongue or his teeth, if he would wring seed or blood from what he held between both.

But he seeks neither, now. Thor arches back against the chair as the long fingers dig deep into the clenching muscle of his thighs, the too-long hair the whisper of raven feathers across his skin. He will bruise, he knows. But it will heal, heal in a way other wounds never will. And he wills Loki to press harder, to tattoo his need and his guilt deep into his skin as if it will reach to the already-tainted soul lurking beneath.

He looks down again only when Loki pulls back, erect cock pulling free of his mouth; it shines with saliva, the head red and weeping. Loki remains on his knees, hands on his thighs for a long moment. Then, he rises without a word.

He does not strip. Still sheathed in black as he climbs upon him, Loki pulls the robe up only to allow for movement, so that when his knees bracket Thor’s hips the fabric drapes to hide what Thor can feel: the nude curve of his brother’s buttocks upon his thighs. The hard shallow curve of Loki’s arousal is still shielded behind that curtain even as it presses against his flat abdomen.

In this position there are no words, again. Loki’s hands rest upon his face, and he leans down; Thor tilts up willingly to receive the kiss he knows he does not deserve, for it is so very gentle, at first. Then: it comes harder, as Loki himself does the same. Rocking against him, just slow at first, is enough to tighten his hands his groin his spine his heart: Loki moves and with each pulse comes the tease of his cock between his brother’s legs. Then his teeth are around Thor’s tongue and he _bites_. It is just hard enough that Thor tastes blood, and then he draws back. Of course he would not rip his brother’s tongue away – there would be no pleasure in it. Words are Loki’s gift, and never ever that of even his golden perfect shining brother.

_But I am no better than the basest evil, in what I have done to you upon this realm that once was my salvation…that once, I prayed, would be yours too._

“I want this,” Loki says, dream-wrought and distant; his hands move over him like those of a master sculptor, making him anew even as Thor believes nothing will ever change what he has allowed himself to become. “Before I go – I would have this, of you.”

“Then take it.”

And he had prepared himself before he came. For all his guilt and his shame, that only hardens Thor further: the gifted image of his bent and broken brother, spread-eagled and naked on his bed in the dark, hair still damp from his bath as long oiled fingers work in and out of his body. Had he whispered his name, then? Had it been a benediction, or a curse?

Whatever the answer, Loki’s body opens willingly to him now: taking him in, taking him deep. As they move into this state of complete physical union, Loki no longer kisses him. He only watches, as if from a great distance. At first there is only stillness. Then, he begins to move. A slow pulse, up and down; his hands rest upon his shoulders, a weight and a burden both desired and deserved – and for all the motion, they are like statues in every other way. Nothing else moves, save for the dance and roil of a thousand million memories and thoughts and emotions behind their locked gazes.

Loki has always had such extraordinary eyes. Such a very unnatural green; had he not known them to be that way since childhood, Thor might have thought Loki augmented them with his seiðr. But then, he thinks now in half-despair, they are not his true eyes; they have always been only an illusion.

Then his mind rebels; no matter what Loki believes, has been convinced of, this is who he is. Because it is the body he grew with – the body Thor himself grew up with. He cannot understand how Loki rejects it, and the memories wrought they have with it, when they are all that matters.

“You are beautiful,” he whispers, and Loki’s laugh is a silver needle pressed into the rapid pulse of his heart.

“Like this?” he asks in breathless wonder, arching an eyebrow high.

“Like always.” His fingers dig deep into the jutting bones of his ever-moving hips. “I’ve always loved you.”

“Love me, hate me, just do what I say,” Loki sing-songs, and his smile bears a thousand teeth and more. “So come with me now, brother. _Come_.”

It is an order, for all it is so gentle and so generous. And Thor can do nothing else but come, and hard. Shaking, keening, his skin sparks with power and with pleasure and with pain, his seed spilling deep within his brother. And still Loki moves, his own hardness like stone even as his laugh is liquid fire.

“Will you always love me, do you think?”

He can barely catch enough breath with which to speak. “I don’t see how I could ever stop.”

“Mmm. I like that.” Sorrow paints him strangely in this half light, making it look almost as if he laughs even as tears pour down his cheeks though in reality all Loki is doing is watching him as he might were they sitting across from one another at as Asgardian banquet table. And yet still he moves, his weight and his clutching clenching body almost painful against him now. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving you, Thor. Which is both the tragedy and the fun of this all, really.”

Loki is a frost giant by birth, but he has rarely used that power against him – and Thor can count on one hand the number of times he has seen his brother in his Jötunn form. Yet even though he is Aesir now, skin gleaming-pale like bone and his eyes deep shining green, Thor feels as if his words and touch freeze him solid.

Loki moves, rhythm unchanged. “Because it hurts, to know what must happen now,” he croons, thoughtful and thoughtless. “But then it’s love that makes hate so much stronger. So much _more_.”

“Loki,” he says, and his brother’s fingers are like claws as they dig deep, drawing blood. “Loki, what—”

“I know what you did, Thor.” The words are so simple for all they are a death knell. “ _I know_.”

Thor cannot speak.

“And this baby…he will be mine.” His hips jerk, reminding Thor that it is already too late, that he has already given Loki exactly what he wants. “I lied, you know, when I said you’d punished yourself enough,” he adds, and this time he _grinds_ down, wrenching a pained groan from Thor’s gasping throat. “Only together will we be enough. Your child, my child – and me.”

He wants to weep. He wants to scream. He wants to reach out and tear down this whole world and the cursed few years that changed them from centuries of blood and bond to two broken figures dancing upon strings tangled and frayed but Thor stares at his brother and can only whisper: “Loki, what are you talking about?”

“You once told would never hurt your own child.” And from his grin Loki has already taken the promise he wishes to otherwise extract by force. “Is that a promise?”

“I would never harm my own blood,” he forces from between numbed lips. “And you are my blood, too—”

“No, I’m not. But it doesn’t matter.” When he grins, it is a great blazing half-torn tapestry of wistful horror and hope. “Because he will hurt _you_. I’ll make sure of it.”

“ _Loki_.”

“Perhaps I’ll name him Mordred,” he says, looking back around with feigned innocence that nonetheless manages to line its way with all the terror of a thousand childhood fear, as if Loki has finally become the monster he had named himself so many years ago. And he smiles to show all his teeth as he adds: “It’s a Midgardian name, of course, but…it all started here. For that alone, I suppose it has rather a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

Everything, from voice to smile to motion is all sweet madness as he leans forward, cock a hard unyielding length even as Thor’s half-hard length remains inside, spent, all that was needed taken, and taken deep.

“You took my child from me,” Loki whispers into his ear, low and sorrowful. “But I’ll give you yours. One day. Because we are gods, you and I, and we play the long game.” The kiss is an echo of a bite, laughing and free. “And so shall he.”

“Loki.”

“Do not fear for this world, or the mortals who move within it,” he says, sitting up straight even with the force of his brother’s sob. “I can wait.”

“What?”

“I think they have punished themselves enough,” he muses even as he still rides upon the wave of his brother’s misery and satisfaction. “Even I cannot hurt someone as much as they can hurt themselves.”  He looses a little gasping laughing chuckle, all sharp edges catching upon his passion, eyes gleaming bright madness. “And they _hurt_ , for what they did to me. I think I can live with that, knowing that they will live with that for the rest of their little mortal lives.”

“No.”

“For we will live very nearly forever,” he goes on as if Thor had never spoken, both in glee and in greed for all that he might take back in payment for what was stolen. “Perhaps _we_ can even forget. But they will not. And if they do…I’ll remind them. Just a little. Just enough.”

“Loki,” he says, and it is a broken thing – almost as broken as the creature who bears the name, almost as broken as the god beneath him. And Loki smiles still, rising and falling in perpetual motion, forever dancing the thin line between redemption and the very last fall.

“Thor,” he says, dreamy and dreamless as he arches his head back, fingers deep anchors in his aching shoulders. “Oh, _Thor_. Say it. Say my name.”

“Loki, no.”

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, and arches forward. His lips are on his throat and they bite down hard; Thor thinks he screams but it is hard to tell, in the green-golden explosion of Loki’s reawakened seiðr. There will be alarms, he thinks, hazy and half-witted even as Loki laughs still, the warmth of his release spreading between them like drawn blood. And he can feel the trickle of true blood moving down his own throat where Loki had spilled it, and when Loki pulls back, pulls out, pulls away, he looks up to see him as a creature almost entirely wrought in black and white for all the shades of grey he has painted upon his fractured soul. His eyes are bitter green, and the crimson warmth of blood upon his lips only augments the sane madness of his smile.

“I’m going, now.”

“You can’t leave.”

When he blinks, it is the innocence of a thousand white lies of childhood and the absolute trust of one who knows that they will always be overlooked. “I think you’ll find I can do what I want.”

With the scent and taste of seiðr in his nose and mouth, Thor knows the weakness of his words. He cannot help them all the same. “The wards—”

“—were your last gift to me, when you broke them then.” In that, at least, there is a flicker of what Thor cannot help but believe to be genuine sorrow and pity. “For that, I will make sure your son and I render you the same funeral rites as we did our daughter. I am not without a heart, after all – that’s why I let her go. She was all love, our daughter. Our son, he shall be born to hate.”

Thor feels as though he is aflame, skin and soul singed and blackened beneath the cool raging heat of his brother’s revenge. “Loki, please, don’t. Don’t do this.”

“But it’s already done.” He steps back, wrapped in shadows, his face still serenity even as he spares him just the slightest hint of scorn. “ _You_ did this, brother – and this is just the way the world ends. Not with a bang, perhaps.” Now he smiles, a finger pressed to his lips as if he has a secret no-one else will ever know. “Oh, no. It’ll just be a little whimper, perhaps.”

And Thor’s words are a scarce whisper upon the poisoned air between them. “I swear to you, Loki, it was never supposed to end this way.”

“Oh, Thor, do open your mind.” Again he steps back, his smile wide and weeping even though his eyes are dry as bone. “It’s not ending. This is only the beginning.”

And he turns and then he is gone – but still Thor saw it. Still Thor _felt_ it: the sudden brilliance blazing to life within his brother, and with it all the promised youth of a new world yet to be born.

And now, looking into the space where the bearer of his eventual death had stood only bare moments ago, Thor has never felt so old.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suppose I ought to start by saying here, [have some breather room music](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWhUPlFnAe8). Just... _breathe_. With that said, while the game this music comes from is absolutely epic and wonderful I do NOT recommend actually going and PLAYING this game. Not right now, anyway. [This song, too, might be somewhat soothing after all that relentless angst...](http://claricechiarasorcha.tumblr.com/post/23221625575/curzec-paracritter-siffieleafy)
> 
> So. Yes. I really do need to sit down here and thank all of you for following me through on this story journey. It certainly got out of hand, even for me, and there is just SO MUCH ANGST in all this. Thing is, I've been going through a rough patch in my life anyway, and I'm always very insecure about my writing even normally. So, each and every single comment I have received, I have treasured. Thank you so much for sharing your feels and thoughts and flailings with me, I feel really privileged to have had such a wonderful glorious accompaniment of readers all the way through.
> 
> Also on the music front, Barton's song down by the river [is this one](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXyv915a5V4). The _New York State of Mind_ thing was actually a sly aside towards the OP, who often enabled me during the writing of this fic [with rennerface singing said song](http://claricechiarasorcha.tumblr.com/post/23219056152/tobeunmade-theroyal-we-theraddy). And let's all just say a great big THANK YOU to Taleya, being that without her, this fic never would have existed to begin with. ALL THE FEELS.
> 
> I also have to thank eevie, who did the most _amazing_ illustration of one of the last scenes. There are two versions of it, seen [here](http://imgur.com/hRase) and then [here](http://imgur.com/eDMNR); the tumblr post is [here](http://ipaintstuff.tumblr.com/post/22643181265/loki-moves-rhythm-unchanged-because-it-hurts). Reblog the brilliance, because this is true talent and I am so lucky to have received this. <3
> 
> Also, although I always thought this was the end of this fic, earlier today [the-evil-biochemist](http://the-evil-biochemist.tumblr.com/) sent me [a lovely little photoset](http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w2/SeventeenthEye/Other%20Photoshoots/morganafinal.png) of Loki's daughter that has enabled me into plotting out a tiny drabble set some six or seven years down the track. I'll link it back here from [tumblr](http://claricechiarasorcha.tumblr.com) if I manage to spill those feels, for while the hope in this fic is empty, time always does move ever onward. And sometimes, hope really can and does spring eternal...even after a winter as cold and frozen as all this.
> 
> So, thank you so much, again, for following me down this dark and gloomy rabbithole and being so kind and generous with your own time and words in letting me know what you thought of all this. You are all wonderful, and I am so lucky to have been able to spend this time with you all. <3
> 
>  **ETA:** I keep meaning to come back here and hang my head in further shame and say that there IS a coda to all this. I'm hesistant to actually tag it onto the story here at AO3 because likely as not the story ought to stand where it should, but if you are curious, [it can be found on my tumblr](http://claricechiarasorcha.tumblr.com/post/23908810276/in-this-last-of-meeting-places). You don't need to read it, though. I've probably felt y'all up quite enough as is...


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